Have you noticed that it feels like we are all in a giant pressure cooker? That the discomfort, maybe even pain and pressure is going up and up and up and up? And the relief never seems to come? You may have found yourself wondering what the hell is happening. Well, there is actually a reason this is happening. And knowing that reason, may just help you to find your way out of the pressure cooker.
The dynamic that is at the root of all of this is mankind’s tendency and capacity to exist in an “out of alignment” state of being. In this context, what does it mean to be in alignment? It means for there to be agreement and harmony rather than discrepancy or conflict in the way you exist both internally and externally. This implies thinking, saying and doing things that are true to who you are, that are in line with your wellbeing, that are consistent with what is truly right for you, and that are a match to what you truly value and truly desire.
So that you understand this better, let’s say that what you truly want is to be in supportive relationships. To keep yourself in relationships with people who prove to be unsupportive, is to be out of alignment. Or let’s say that you value family above all else, but you spend the majority of your time working away from them. This is to be out of alignment. Or let’s say that the truth of who you are, is that you are a leader. But you consistently choose to follow so as to avoid conflicts, this is to be out of alignment. Or let’s say that what is in alignment with your wellbeing is to be in nature, but you live in the city, this is to be out of alignment. When your thoughts, words, behaviors, values, health, desires, choices and actions are not consistent with one another, you are out of alignment.
People tend to go out of alignment and then develop strategies to tolerate misalignment, rather than seeking true change. It isn’t like life is going good for you when you do this. Life hurts. Things feel wrong. But if you are like most people, you take the edge off of that pain in some way so that you can handle that out of alignment state of being. And because of this, you are unresponsive to the pain and pressure and signs that you are out of alignment. As well as to the universal promptings to get back into alignment. Knowing all this, the pressure cooker dynamic is down to two things.
When you are out of alignment in some way, you are lining up with what is not true to who you are, not in line with your wellbeing, not what is truly right for you, and not what you truly value and truly desire. Your energy will be going there. To unwanted things. And so, more and more of that will manifest in your lived experience. A worsening and worsening will naturally occur.
The universe is enhancing this worsening with a pressure cooker dynamic, intensifying discomfort and negative effects of misalignment, due to people’s non-responsiveness to it, so that you can’t ignore it or cope with it anymore. It is doing so in order to snap people back into alignment. The universe is snapping people into alignment and into their rightful place by making misalignment too painful to maintain.
This process is not just happening at a personal level, and it is also happening at a more macrocosmic level, with humanity and the world itself. This is why you see such an amplification of what was and is out of alignment within humanity and within the world. So, we are seeing this amplification happen as crises in people’s personal lives as well as crises within whole populations of people. We are seeing it manifest as destruction or death in people’s personal lives and also destruction and death on a global level. We are seeing the worst expressions of self in individuals, but also in governments. You may be seeing an amplification of health issues in yourself as an individual, but you are also seeing an amplification of ill-health in the environment, especially where nature meets humans.
This pressure cooker dynamic is unbearable, because it is designed to be. It is designed to be a way of making it so that a person literally cannot stay out of alignment. And so that the collective of humanity and the world cannot stay out of alignment. It is designed to make it so that people have no other way out other than to snap. But snap back into alignment. This is not often a smooth or pretty process though. After all, people have very real reasons for being out of alignment and staying out of alignment. Very real terrors and yes, even pains that they are up against in getting back into alignment. And so, the resistance to getting into alignment is HUGE. People tend to try to resist harder when this pressure cooker dynamic is occurring. They double down on their coping mechanisms and go more out of alignment before snapping back into alignment. You are probably recognizing some of this in the people in your life already, if not in yourself.
Some people have a higher tolerance for the discomfort and pain that comes with being out of alignment. This makes them less responsive in general. When this is the case, the pressure will increase until they literally reach a “snapping point.” Humanity has demonstrated a tolerance for what is out of alignment on a collective level, especially for collective unhappiness. So, here too, there is a snapping point. Change is being forced; people can no longer somewhat uncomfortably remain in misaligned states.
To give you a taste of this pressure cooker, say that someone is struggling with feeling powerless and wants to be able to actually do things that bring about a better result. But say that they are acting out of alignment with their own personal power. The pressure cooker will escalate situations where they experience disempowerment until they can’t take it anymore and re-claim their power. They may take an empowered action and be forced to draw on a powerful inner resource.
Or for example, say that someone values integrity, but keeps behaving in flaky ways. The consequences of behaving flaky will escalate, as will situations that cause them to become aware of the fact that they are flaky. They will encounter flaky people everywhere they go and suffer from the consequences these people create. Until there is an acknowledgement that they have to keep their word and be on time and follow through and keep the plans they set and stay true to their commitments and promises.
Or let’s say that people in general are in a position of valuing freedom and kindness, but they are part of a country with a government that restricts their freedoms and behaves in corrupt and cruel ways. This will escalate, becoming worse and worse until they finally act so as to bring down that government and demand/create a new form of government. Of course, these examples are objective pictures of what is occurring. They do no justice to the actuality of such an experience, any more than saying "they were plunged into frigid waters” does justice to the actual experience that those on the Titanic endured when they actually plunged into the North Atlantic Ocean which happened to be about 28 degrees Fahrenheit, or -2 degrees Centigrade).
So, what should you do about all this?
Accept that even though it does not feel like it, from objective perspective, what feels like it is happening against you in your life right now, is actually happening for you. And accept you are not going to get out of the pressure without making serious changes to turn what is out of alignment into what is in alignment. It will snap you. To use a popular phrase, your resistance is futile.
“Get ahead” of the universal pressure cooker; take proactive action. Stop putting up with discomfort. Stop tolerating what feels wrong. Do not wait for discomfort to escalate. Notice the increased discomfort you are feeling and use it to define what’s not right for you. Recognize what is out of alignment. Identify what is a “no” for you (misaligned, draining, wrong) and stop doing it. Identify what is a “yes” for you (aligned, authentic, right) and commit to it. Where is there agreement and harmony in yourself and in your life and where is there discrepancy or conflict in yourself and in your life experience? How are you thinking, saying and doing things that are NOT in line with your wellbeing, that are inconsistent with what is truly right for you, and that are the opposite of what you truly value and truly desire. Really think about this: “If the heat gets turned up on this in that the situation worsens, if I were to act in alignment with what I truly want, what will my reaction be? What will I do? What will be a yes and what will be a no?”
Immediately start making the changes that will become necessary later if things get worse. Take steps in advance to align with what’s genuinely right for you. Keep in mind that when it comes to alignment, it never works to just do fill in the blank that is out of alignment, so that you can get fill in the blank that is in alignment with what you want. There is no such thing as “misalignment now, so that I can get alignment later”. Consider first: What am I wanting? And from this vision and with this vision in mind, consider what to do and how to deal with things, especially unwanted situations, in a way that is in alignment with what you truly want.
So that you understand this better, here is a real-life example. River just turned 40. River grew up in a childhood home that really did not adjust for her best interests in any way. The house revolved around her mother, who was diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder. In order to adapt to this environment, which was out of alignment for River to be in, River was on her own to accomplish anything she wanted to accomplish. She did not have real support. Rather, her parents would do things for her only when it served their best interests in some way. For example, when they wanted her to go preoccupy herself, so that they could have time without the pressure of having to watch children, they would buy her a bike. She would then use that bike to get where she wanted to go. River overcompensated for the lack of actual support by becoming super competent and capable and putting all the pressure on herself, none on others. The problem is, it was out of alignment for River to pick up all the pressure and take it off of everyone else. Over time, this has gotten her into more and more trouble. She keeps getting into situations where people ride her coattails and set up gaslighting situations where they profess to be supporting her, but really it is the other way around. They are coasting on River. It has become a real “support me, so that I can support you” dynamic. River is now a company owner. No surprise there. But she has been so out of alignment in this way: She wants to be supported. She needs a team that is really pulling their own weight and taking pressure off of her. But when the company gets into a pinch, the people in her company always find a way to put the pressure back on her to do what it takes to pull them all out of the hot water. Some days she wonders why she even has people working for her, if she has to do everything so that they can get a paycheck.
This situation, in this pressure cooker dynamic, gets worse and worse and worse. The man that she hires as her CEO embezzles money and puts the company into debt, all personally secured by River herself before bailing without finding a replacement. The company has no money to sue. The rest of the company doesn’t hustle to make enough to cover expenses, leaving River to take on double the work to cover for it. The woman who replaces the old CEO gets them into even deeper trouble, this time with the taxes and with slipping into the behavior of passivity. River feels like she has to do everything herself, which she literally can’t do given that she has a very specific role in the company that can’t be dropped. And certainly not in a company of its size. Despite it being impossible to do, more people start bailing out of the company, leaving her to have to downsize and sell her personal house to cover for the debt. River’s health takes a bad turn because of all the pressure she is abandoned to deal with alone. River is brought to a snapping point. The snapping point of: “I cannot carry other people on my shoulders. I literally cannot do it anymore. I am putting the pressure that people should be carrying back on them and I’m holding them accountable to it. And if they refuse to take it, I do not want them in my life. And if this means I have to fold my company, then I will do it and find some other way to do what I do.”
If River had realized this pressure cooker dynamic were happening, she would have stopped tolerating the discomfort of people putting all the pressure on her. Every time it happened; she would have put the pressure back on them. She also would have put in the necessary preventative measures to ensure that they couldn’t do so in sneaky ways, like using her name to take on debt or accessing her accounts or getting into dispersed responsibility dynamics in the business, so no one can be held accountable. She would have started to set up the structure of the company and her life in general in different ways where she isn’t the back-up plan for things going wrong. She would proactively practice the art of letting other people pull their weight and putting pressure on other people and making them face the ways that they are refusing to take pressure that should be theirs to take. She would have proactively started doing trauma work relative to the lack of support she experienced. In her romantic relationships, when a man ceases to put in effort to stay connected and make the relationship good, she would stop herself from overcompensating for his lack of effort and instead, mirror his effort level. Of course, this means being willing to potentially experience the pain of relationship loss.
In alignment with this pressure cooker dynamic that is currently going on in such an extreme way, and people’s general lack of responsiveness to all the things on the road to a level 10 reflection of misalignment, a lot of people are experiencing or are going to be experiencing the things that catalyze drastic change. Things like crisis, death, loss, drastic worsening, health issues, wars, drastic political shifts, climate catastrophes, traumas, things coming to an abrupt end, collapse of things that were depended on, relationship patterns becoming intolerable, the arrival of a baby, financial disasters, geographical moves and accidents. A lot of which is experienced as dystopian.
If you are like so many of us, currently struggling big time with this pressure cooker situation, another good video of mine to watch is: The How Might This Be For Me Exercise.
Again, it does not feel like any of what you are experiencing is for you. But this pressure cooker you are in, is trying to make you aware of what is not in alignment and to snap you back into alignment. Ultimately to put you back into alignment with what is really good and right for you. What you really, truly want. And the more ahead of this process you can get, the better.
Shadow work is life transforming. When you know what you did not know before and when you see what you did not see before, it changes your entire perspective. And this influences the decisions you make and the actions you take. But you can fall into the trap of thinking that doing shadow work in and of itself changes your life FOR you. And by falling into this trap, you may fail to go beyond the step of gaining awareness and doing mental processes. It is so essential for shadow work to be followed by decisions and especially by actions.
Years ago, the revolutionary psychologist Carl Jung (while studying with Freud), observed the fact that there were parts of his patients that they, themselves were aware of and to the contrary, there were parts that they, themselves were unaware of. This observation is not particularly revolutionary because it takes zero effort for everyone to notice this about the people around them. But stick with me. Consciousness has long been referred to as a light. To become conscious of something is to be able to see it in the same way that we see something that is exposed to light. When something is unconscious, we cannot see it. It is as if we are trying to see it in the dark. And so, Carl Jung began to refer to the unconscious aspects within a person that they, themselves are unaware of, or could not see, as their ‘shadow’. The human shadow is any aspect of a person that is not exposed to the light of consciousness. Fast forward to today, shadow work is now a term used often in spiritual and psychology circles to describe any process (of which there are thousands) that makes the subconscious conscious and that is designed to resolve subconscious issues.
Some people genuinely expect that by doing shadow work in and of itself, their life will magically transform for them and for the better. And they feel like if this isn’t happening, something must be wrong. But here is the reality, while there can be exceptions, the vast majority of shadow work is meant to be acted upon. The content of the subconscious and even any processes done with this subconscious content is meant to inform your decisions and inform your actions. In fact, the vast majority of the time, without this follow through on the shadow work you have done, nothing improves. No pattern actually changes and in fact, things can get a lot worse.
So that you can understand this as a concept, let’s look at a side-by-side example of two women, both of whom are facing a similar situation and whom have attended a seminar to do shadow work on the issue they are facing. Meet Bianca and Rina.
Bianca and Rina both live with roommates that they don’t get along with at all. They are both lost as to what their purpose is and are lost in overall life. And they are both dating men that they have been with for several years now, but neither are happy in those relationships because according to them, the men in their life are just really not emotionally available.
Bianca and Rina both do the completion process, parts work, breath work and belief work over the course of a weekend. As a result, Bianca has discovered that she is lost because she was so busy trying to please her mother for her whole life that she has no firm grasp on her own identity, what she really wants and what she really likes. She sees that she goes for relationships where the other person knows exactly what they want and need and she just becomes that for them. She sees that she duped her own boyfriend into thinking she was the perfect girl for him, when really, she was just being what she thought would make him like her. And now, she’s unhappy. She sees that she keeps herself in situations that feel wrong for her, but that other people like; and around people who have no interest in changing things. My way or the highway people. Because she believes “To be loved, you’ve got to please others.”
Rina discovers that she too spent her life catering to pleasing others. But for her, it was making sure to be the one in the family that was always easy and always good because her mom and dad were so stressed out with a brother who had a lot of behavioral problems. Life has never been about her. From her perspective, life always revolved around her brother’s needs and her parent’s need for her to not be any more of a burden than her brother already was. Her wants and needs did not exist. She sees that she has adapted to this situation by conforming to what other people want and need. She is really good at it. She realized that in relationships, she figures out what people want and need and just conforms to that. This way, she feels closer to them. But then, inevitably feels lonely, because there is no “her” in the relationship. She sees that she is in this situation with her boyfriend. That there is no her in the relationship because she left herself in the dust to become what her boyfriend wants and needs. And now, she hates him for it, when it isn’t even his fault. She sees that she can’t keep living this life where she keeps herself in situations that feel wrong for her, just because other people are fine with them. And that she does this because she holds the belief that “To be loved, you need to become what other people want and need.”
Bianca, having gained the awareness from her shadow work, sees that she needs to make different decisions and take different actions. She sets out an action plan and follows through on it. First, she decides that she needs to move out of the place where she lives with roommates and that she wants to live on her own for a while and create a home environment that is truly reflective of her own preferences. This will force her to figure out her own preferences because she will not have anyone to conform to. Bianca does this. During this process she does figure out her own preferences, but she admits that she caught herself trying to conform to a home style guru she follows on Instagram for a bit. Bianca also decided to have a rough conversation with her boyfriend about the fact that she acted in a way that would make him like her, and that she really doesn’t know herself well enough to know whether they will be a good fit long term. He was very hurt by this. As she started changing to be more in-alignment with who she really is and what her actual interests are, they started fighting more and more and they eventually decided to break up.
Bianca decided to become really clear on what she wants and what she likes and dislikes and what her interests are and on what she wants in a partner before starting to date again. When she finally did start dating again, she had to fight the urge to just act in a way that was pleasing as opposed to authentic. But she did it. She got rejected pretty hard a couple of times because of it. But she is now in a new relationship with a man and she feels good in this new relationship. It is a very different relationship than any of the ones she had before. It is way more about intellectual connection and quality time activities than it is about her doing acts of service and looking as good as she can every day in order to get the security that a man likes her. She now realizes that to be loved, you have to be real, otherwise what the other person is loving a character you are playing. Bianca doesn’t know her purpose yet. But she has admitted to herself that what is most important to her is children, specifically giving children the best start possible. So, she has changed course and is now training to be a Montessori teacher. She is way happier in her life now. She no longer feels lost.
Rina, having gained the awareness from her shadow work, feels like her whole perspective has shifted. She is blown away to really realize how much of a non-existent person she becomes in relationships. She no longer feels like to be loved you have to become what other people want and need because thanks to working on her belief, she can clearly see that some people are loved, despite having extremely unpleasant personalities. She now wants to be loved for who she really is. Rina has learned that when you improve your vibration, without doing anything at all, your life just changes. The things you want simply appear in your reality. So, when Rina goes back to her life and she discovers that she still has no idea what her purpose is and still hates her roommates and she is still surrounded by people who expect her to please them and who don’t seem to care what she wants and needs, she feels angry. She starts to feel like shadow work doesn’t work. From Rina’s perspective, by doing the completion process and breathwork and belief work, she is fixing stuff from the past and that should change her vibration so it should all just get better. New opportunities should just happen. She should just know who she is and what to do with her life. Situations should fix themselves and just be less complicated. Her boyfriend should just start acting differently and most especially, he should react well to her finally being honest with him about who she really is. Or even better, the universe should have just make it so that her real soul mate just crosses her path. For Rina, shadow work IS the effort she is putting into things getting better in her life. That should be enough. She feels like “what’s the point of shadow work if you do all that hard work of looking at hard truths and fixing your vibration and then you have to go do all the other, tangible hard work anyway”. For example, Rina thinks: Why would she have to do all that hard work of looking at hard truths and fixing her vibration relative to money if she just has to go get a job and work to improve her financial situation anyway? Rina did not do the “hard work” of dealing with her roommate problem or boyfriend problem because having to confront any of them or do the work of changing things or leaving situations or ending relationships feels too hard. And Rina thinks it defeats the point of doing shadow work. Because Rina is not actually making the decisions and taking the actions that her shadow work pointed to her having to make and take, she is even more unhappy than she was before. And she really wonders why shadow work isn’t working for her.
Your life will not improve unless your decisions and actions align with the shadow work you do. Some people forget that life not only includes, but implies action. Pattern changes include action changes. And action is a part of the picture of manifestation. And the reality is, your actions must be in alignment with what you see, know and transform using shadow work. Otherwise, you are out of alignment with the shadow work you are doing. You are out of alignment with the truths you are becoming aware of. You are out of alignment with the positive changes taking place on a mental and emotional level. For example, if Rina saw using shadow work that she makes herself non-existent in her relationships and yet, she continues to not bring herself forward in her relationship with her boyfriend for fear of conflict, hoping that the relationship will just magically get better, then her actions (or in this case lack thereof) are out of alignment with her own path of progression and therefore, she will not experience improvement.
The reality is actually worse than this. The reality is that if you do shadow work and fail to make changes, this implies making different decisions and taking different actions, your life experience will actually get worse. First, when what you are becoming aware of with shadow work is dysfunction, it becomes harder and more painful to stay in that dysfunction. Second, it is an invitation for an escalation. Think of Rina, let’s say that what is in her best interests and what is in alignment with her growth path is to really develop autonomy and bring herself into relationships. If she does the shadow work and becomes aware and still won’t make the necessary changes, she is stuck still. So, the pressure must increase in some way for her to get un-stuck. Without realizing it, Rina is inviting an escalation. She is inviting a situation which will put more pressure on her to get into alignment. And the reality is, it’s got to be a situation where she exercises her free will to decide to act in alignment with her personal truth in a situation where she would normally not do so. Remember that she abandons her personal truth to self-preserve. Therefore, this implies that it is not going to be a feel-good situation. It will be a situation where the fear and pain involved in acting in alignment with her personal truth are preferable to the fear and pain involved in abandoning her personal truth. Basically, it will be a worse feeling situation than the one she is already in. So, remember this… To do shadow work and not make decisions and not take actions in alignment with what you became aware of (or transformed) is to ask for a painful escalation of the situation you are already in.
It is perfectly understandable if you are afraid of making changes. Some changes are scary and painful, no matter if you know that they are the necessary precursor to having the life you want. They are even more scary and painful if you aren’t sure if the changes you are being pointed towards by your shadow work will make things better or worse. But caretake that fear, rather than let it make you passive. Because for the vast majority of shadow work, different decisions and different actions must be taken as a result of doing it. The shadow work will not change your life for you.
So, you may be wondering, why is it worth it to do shadow work, if I have to follow it up with action in order to experience improvement? Let me give you just a few reasons. First and most importantly, if you were to make decisions and take any action before becoming aware, you are doing so without necessary information. This means, you would be making different decisions and taking different actions. And not conscious ones. And that would lead to results you do not want. The second is, shadow work changes your perspective. And a different perspective equates to a different life experience, so shadow work can change your life experience in and of itself. The third is, you can heal things within yourself. But your outer life must not be a contradiction to those things you internally heal. Basically, your outer life needs to reflect the changes you make internally for you to be in-alignment. The fourth is, doing shadow work does change your energetic vibration. And this means, it does make you a match to different people, places, circumstances and things. But alignment is a big part of vibration and action is a part of the picture of alignment or lack thereof and therefore vibration.
Shadow work and action based on the shadow work you do go hand in hand. They are a married pair. So, make sure that your shadow work is followed by congruent action. And watch your life experience truly shift.
When it comes to love, people tend to think of it as very one-dimensional. They see it simply as a resource that people want to get. And they also see the ways that people feel loved as one dimensional. They only see that a person feels loved when they are given love. Most people don’t really understand that love is something that people want to give. In fact, to give love is a human need. And they don’t see that a person feels loved when the love they give is fully received. In fact, some people feel the very most loved specifically by their love being received. Becoming consciously aware of this aspect of love can be real game changer for you.
People actually need to give love in order to experience a state of wellbeing in their life. And they need that love to be received. There are many ways that a person gives their love. All of the multitude of ways that a person gives their love basically fits into the following camps of showing love: They may use words to uplift a person. To validate, appreciate, adore and praise them. They may spend time with a person, but specifically spending time with them that is of quality. They may put energy into connecting with someone through the mind. They may give gifts. They may provide for someone. They may take actions that make a person’s life more enjoyable and demonstrate their love through tangible support that requires their own effort. They may express their love through physical touch. They may put energy into pulling a person closer to them emotionally and supporting them emotionally. They may put their own energy into another person’s desires, goals and needs. They may protect a person and keep a person safe from harm. They may intentionally establish a relationship between themselves and another person’s non-physical aspect, so as to establish a spiritual connection. People need these demonstrations of love to be received. So, what does it mean for your love to be received? It means for the recipient of your love to be open to it, to acknowledge it, to take it in and appreciate /value the love you are giving. Receiving love often requires vulnerability. And this willingness to be vulnerable in and of itself in this way, is a gift of trust. It is a relationship affirming thing.
People often only recognize love in terms of what they are getting. For example, someone is getting love when they are being given a present. Or someone is getting love when they are being given physical touch. Most people don’t recognize that people feel loved by their love being received. For example, someone feels loved because the physical touch they gave was soaked up completely and someone surrendered to it, as if their whole being was saying “yes”. Or someone feels loved because when they gave a person a gift, that person acted excited and immediately put it on their nightstand, so they could see it all the time. It is deeply painful when the love you give isn’t received. When the other person isn’t open to it, doesn’t acknowledge it, doesn’t take it in and doesn’t appreciate or value it. When they push it away, and therefore push us away.
Even though we all feel love both by receiving love and by our love being received, all people fall somewhere on a scale regarding this. After all, we all experienced different things over the course of our life experience which effected the ways we give and receive love. Some people have a much deeper need to feel received than others.
Some people experienced deep levels of rejection with regards to showing love over the course of their life. Let’s go back to childhood to look at this one. Children naturally give their love. They demonstrate love towards their parents and if these demonstrations are ignored or pushed away or turned against, if they are not taken in and valued, the child will learn that he or she has no value. The child will suffer because of the perceived rejection inherent in this. They will suffer the feeling that no one is willing to trust them. They will also suffer from the distance and isolation that is created when they are not received. They cannot feel loved if the message they keep getting is: “When you put your energy forth towards me, I will not take it in. I.e. I will not take you in.” And when this kind of trauma occurs, a person will in fact feel far more loved by someone receiving their love than they will by someone giving them love. And the healing experience for them is to be fully received. For someone to soak up the love they give. In their love being received, they are getting so much. They are getting closeness, they are getting trust, they are getting the message that they are wanted. Their goodness, worth and value is being affirmed.
So that you can see an example of this, I’ll tell you about Amy. She was born to parents who had a problematic marriage. Her mother wanted her father to cherish her and make her and the family the center of his world. But this was not what her father wanted. He didn’t like being married, in line with the popular expression, he often referred to Amy’s mother as “the old ball and chain”. He had several affairs, one of which yielded a half-brother that he kept secret from everyone for ten years. He did not want children, nor did he particularly like children. And he was always at the racing track, gambling on horses. This left Amy with a very unhappy mother all the time. Just the two of them. Amy wanted a close, loving relationship with her mother, as all children do, especially since Amy wasn’t going to experience any love from her father; nor was her father going to receive any of her love. He spent nearly every minute he could outside of the home. And when he happened to be home, his entire modus operandi was “don’t bother me”. The problem is, Amy’s mother wanted a relationship with her husband. The man she knew he could be. She wanted his love, not Amy’s.
So, what did this practically look like? When Amy’s mom needed something, like for the trash to be taken out, she needed it from her husband. So, when Amy did it, her mother showed no positive reaction, only disappointment. When Amy went up to hug her mother, Amy’s arms were peeled off and she was told to go play with her toys. When Amy made things for her mother at school and brought them home, her mother didn’t react with any enthusiasm. Instead, she often criticized them. When Amy initiated spending time with her mother, her mother rebuffed it, always having something more important to do and acting like spending time with Amy was a burden. This is how it went with all displays of Amy’s love. Because to give love is to give of the self, she learned to relate to herself as worthy of rejection. As either a. nothing of value or b. something that people think is bad, like poison. She learned that she was not wanted and closeness with her is not wanted. That she has nothing valuable to offer. That no one trusts her. That she is powerless to the distance between herself and others. And a void started to grow within her. A desperate hunger to be received by someone. Amy spent many of her adult years trying to give her love to people who, like her mother, for one reason or another would not receive it. But then, she found Beth.
Beth was a successful entrepreneur with a cosmetics company. Beth had an endless capacity to receive anything that a person could put her way. She lacked support all her life. So, when Beth met Amy, she soaked up every little bit of support Amy gave. She wanted Amy around all the time. She was thirsty for Amy’s opinion, wanting to know what she thought at all times. She reveled in every one of Amy’s little gestures. Like when Amy did her laundry, she jumped on the bed and sniffed the clothes and was visibly relieved. Or when Amy got her coffee, she smiled and grabbed the cup straight out of her hands and savored it. Or when Amy gave her a shoulder rub. She couldn’t help but stop typing on her computer and she leaned her body back into Amy’s touch. When Amy bought Beth a best-friendship ring, Beth put it on and wore it religiously. Some people judgmentally call Beth a “taker” and Amy a “giver”. But what they don’t understand is that for Beth and Amy specifically, their relationship is deeply healing for them both. What onlookers are too blind to see, is that Amy finally feels so deeply loved because she is finally completely received.
Some people feel far more loved when they are given something to receive by the other person than they do in their expressions of love being received. And to the opposite, some people feel far more loved by their expressions of love being received by the other person than they do in receiving something from the other person. Unless we grasp this complexity, we will not be in a conscious enough relationship with love. Nor will we be able to find people who are compatible to us.
If you are someone who is desperate for your love to be fully and completely received, there are people in this world who are just as desperate to fully and completely drink your love in. There are people who are starving for you and who are in just as much pain in that deprivation of being given love as you are in that constant rejection of your love.
When it comes to nearly everything, experts do not agree. And money is no exception. You will hear some experts say that the way to get money, is to follow your passion. And you will hear some experts say the exact opposite. They will tell you to not follow your passion if what you want is money. But what if both of them were right? And what if, by knowing this, you could make a better financial decision for yourself? Let’s unpack the truth about following your passion and money.
When we say following your passion in the context of this conversation, what we mean is dedicating yourself to what you have a great interest and pleasure in as your way to make money in this world. How can it be that it is both true and not true that following your passion leads to financial abundance? To understand this, Let’s look at the truths that exist in both camps. Starting with: Following your passion is critical if what you want is financial abundance.
Passion gives you intrinsic motive. Intrinsic motive is essentially the desire to do something because the activity itself is inherently pleasurable and interesting to you. As opposed to doing something because by doing it, you get an external reward or avoid a negative consequence. The power of intrinsic motive can never and should never be underestimated. Intrinsic motive is like a powerful internal engine with a battery that charges itself by engaging in the very thing you are doing. It is obvious how that would give you the advantage when it comes to success. Intrinsic motive creates far greater commitment and engagement in what you are doing. It improves your performance. And it makes you more resilient to challenges and problems. When it comes to getting what you want, this includes things like achieving a goal or gaining financial abundance, the reality is that people will face challenges. When those challenges happen and you are not passionate about what you are doing, it becomes really hard to stay the course.
If you do what you are passionate about, you are in a state of greater alignment. Why? If you are doing something with your time and energy that you don’t find pleasure or interest in, then part of you is going “yes, do this”. And part of you is going “meh”. It is really not on board. This means, rather than being in alignment, you have internal opposition going on. This is both going to cause you pain and means that less of your energy is going in the same direction, making it harder to achieve success. Also, passion is an indication that you are in alignment with critical non-physical elements of your existence. Things like your non-physical self and your pre-birth intention. When you are out of alignment with your non-physical aspect, it is a very big deal because the energy from the nonphysical cannot flow through you the same way. Nor are you walking the path of your life purpose. Nor will you find yourself in the flow of synchronicity where people, places and things come into your life experience in alignment with what you are wanting. It is to be out of alignment with universal abundance in general. All of this will make life feel very off and very hard. As if you are going against the current. This is the element of truth that most people who teach people about law of attraction are concerned about when it comes to money.
Passion makes people master what they are doing. It drives you to be the best you can be and to drive what you are doing to be the best it can be. When you are passionate about something, you invest more of yourself into it. This means you put more time and energy into it, you seek out new knowledge and you acquire more skills related to it. You increase your expertise in it. You strive naturally for excellence, which improves the quality of what you do. On top of this, it makes you more creative. When you are passionate about something, you explore that thing from every angle. You consider new ideas and strategies and are likely to take more risks in the name of mastery. All of this can lend itself to more financial abundance.
Passion gives you more energy. We touched on this a bit earlier, but when you are passionate about something, you have FAR, FAR more energy with which to do something. More energy lends itself to greater productivity.
Your passion is infectious. You don’t exist in a silo. On the path of making money, you will be working with people. Others people are part of the picture of your financial success. Clients, co-workers, employees, independent contractors, institutions that lend money etc. And the more passionate you are, the more that passion will leak out and inspire them. Also, the more it will line you up with other likewise passionate people. You are not the only one who works better when you are passionate. Everyone does. So, your passion lends to the other people who are part of the picture of your financial success doing better at their contribution. Passion is a key element of getting people behind what you are doing. Aren’t you far more likely to think there is value in something that someone is passionate about?
People find meaning in what they are passionate about. People need what they are doing in their lives to have meaning. When you believe that what you are doing has meaning, you believe what you are doing is important and has value. You are more likely to really go the extra mile for it, and be in alignment with the exchange of money for its value. It has been proven again and again that when employees find meaning in their work, they put in more effort, they come up with more creative ideas, they generate far more revenue for the companies they work for and they stay with the companies they work for, for much longer.
The world is full of people who are deeply passionate about what they do to make money and credit their passion directly as being the reason they became financially successful. Like the guy who is so passionate about technology and software development that he poured himself into his craft and co-founded a company that revolutionized computer tech and became the richest man in the world for 18 years in a row.
Now let’s look at the truths that exist on the opposite side of the scale, following your passion is a bad idea when it comes to money and it doesn’t lead to financial abundance.
Passion is not the same as talent or skill. Just because you are passionate about something, doesn’t mean you are good at it. And just because you put effort into getting good at something, doesn’t automatically mean that you can compete in a marketplace against other people who are really good at it.
Marketability is an important part of the picture of financial abundance and passion doesn’t make marketability not matter. Marketability is really about whether there is a market for whatever it is that you are doing. To monetize something effectively, there must be a market for it. Just because you are passionate, doesn’t automatically mean that what you are doing or what you created is seen as valuable or is attractive to other people. A market needs to exist for whatever you are offering and you need to make whatever you are passionate about marketable in order to make money with it.
The skills to have a successful career at what you are passionate about must go beyond just what you are passionate about. If you want to make money, there has to be a strategy for how to make the money. You can’t approach it like “do what I love doing and the money will come”. You need not just a strategy, but also skills. When a person turns a passion into a profession, they usually need to develop skills that are not directly related to the passion itself. These other skills need to be acquired, learned and put to task. And some of these, a person will feel no passion about. For example, say that you are super passionate about music. You may even be an excellent musician. But let’s say that a necessary set of skills to have in order to become profitable as a musician is entrepreneurial business skills like marketing and digital acumen so you can develop an online following. And you may absolutely hate doing these things. None the less, your option is to pair up with someone who will do these things instead of you, or for you to do them. Otherwise, you are performing on the street while shoppers pass you by, occasionally dropping coins your way.
Passion is self-focused rather than other focused and this is not a good recipe for making money. People are more likely to pay for your talent than your passion. Passion can come as the result of being really good at something and the positive kickbacks of being really good at it. So, don’t think that your choice is an either-or. But money tends to follow what you are good at. People are likely to find that more valuable. And at the same time, the market doesn’t necessarily reward talent. People don’t really care if you feel good doing your job. They care about their own needs and wants. So, if you want to make money, it is all about answering to needs and desires. But something that is important to understand is that just because you are gifted or talented, doesn’t mean that you are entitled to financial abundance. It doesn’t mean that the universe, world or people “owe you” money for it.
In some situations, turning your passion into what you do to make money makes you lose your passion for it. When you turn what you are passionate about into the way you make money, there is pressure to perform and make money with it. And stress is introduced to the picture. These extrinsic motives and pressures can diminish the intrinsic pleasure you find in it and make you quit. It loses its magic. On top of this, it is really important to figure out the ways in which you want to use your passions and talents in the world. Just because you love dance for example, doesn’t mean you will love teaching a dance class full of 20 children every day of the week. And just because you would love dancing for a dance company doesn’t mean you are guaranteed to earn a good living doing that.
Financial abundance is not just this abstract concept of money flowing in from the universe. It is about the smart and effective management of money too. Plenty of people make a ton of money and lose it just as fast because they lack financial knowledge and financial skills. You may not have much passion for this. But not knowing how to handle money does not add up to financial abundance.
Evolving passions can introduce complexity into the picture of abundance. What we are interested in and what we feel pleasure doing doesn’t always stay the same. The same is true of people in the market (your customers). By turning your passion into your career, you might put all of your eggs into that basket, only for the market to change, leaving you high and dry financially. And job flexibility is much harder to exercise if you are doing what you are passionate about. Or, you might go all in on what you are passionate about only to become more passionate about something else later and decide to switch over to that and have to start over from scratch in that new thing. There is nothing “wrong” with this. But it does present serious financial challenges.
The overall picture of your vibration relative to money and financial abundance in general, is quite complex. It is not only influenced by whether you do what you are passionate about or not. It is influenced by your attitude towards money itself. It is influenced by your relationship to whatever it is that you want. It is influenced by beliefs you hold, most of which are subconscious. It is influenced by what you have learned about money. It is influenced by traumas. And these attitudes and traumas you hold, dictate your decisions and behaviors. Many of which are oppositional to money without you even realizing it.
The world is full of people who are passionate, but whose passion has not led to financial success at all. Like the guy who has always had a passion for marine biology, especially for krill. In fact, he has dedicated the last 10 years of his life to studying Antarctic Krill. But he relies entirely on grants and scholarships from universities and government agencies and he can barely make enough to eat well. He certainly isn’t rich just because he followed his passion because if passion guaranteed financial success, he'd be rich as hell by now.
Especially after the film “The Secret” came out and people started following many teachers that were teaching about The Law of Attraction, people started believing that "following your passion" guarantees financial abundance. The problem is, people were fed a superbly simplistic, you could say kindergarten level version of how this universe works, especially of how “vibration” works. When the reality is, it isn’t so simplistic at all.
On top of this, what passion drives first and foremost is success. What is success? It is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. That aim or purpose is not necessarily money. When people talk about success, they almost always mean wealth. But wealth is simply one potential aim or purpose a person might have. One person might consider happiness success. Another might consider knowing the most on a subject success. Another might consider a certain level of fame success. Arguably, all of these things could happen without money being a part of the picture. The steps you take on the road to success change when the aim or purpose changes. The same is true if what you want is financial abundance. If your aim and purpose is to do what you are passionate about, essentially to do what you find pleasurable and interesting, you may be doing far different things than what will make you the most money, even if you are able to make good money through doing what you are passionate about.
So, what is the take away from all this? Passion is a critical driver for success. It is a key factor of bringing about success and success might include money. It does not make sense to spend your time and energy and efforts doing something with your life that you have no interest in and can find no pleasure doing. Aside from a perfectly miserable life, this is a recipe for all kinds of things that oppose financial success. And, at the very same time, passion does not guarantee money. Just because you followed your passion, doesn’t mean that the universe is going to throw money in your lap. You’ve got to consider lots of other things, such as your talent, marketability, finding the customer, defining what makes you stand out in the market and necessary skillsets to monetize whatever you are looking to offer people.
So, if you want to make money doing something you are passionate about, you are looking for where passion meets what you are good at. Your talent. You are looking at how to best leverage that sweet spot so as to bring value to other people. Value they will pay for. In other words, you need to monetize it. You’ve got to find your market and then effectively market what you are offering. And in this whole picture, you’ve got to manage the money effectively. And you can’t forget that when it comes to making money, providing value for the customer is more important to the customer than you doing what you love.
A lot of us have had those moments in our lives where we just want to go shut ourselves into a closet and sit in the dark and hide from the world. When we do this, we are unconsciously gravitating towards what we know that a closet can provide. Well, what if I told you that sitting in a closet in a conscious way can actually be a great tool for awakening.
Conscious closet work is when you consciously go into a closet (or some other dark, enclosed space) as a tool for your own body, emotions, mind and/or overall consciousness. There are a lot of benefits that closets can provide with regards to our wellbeing and our consciousness work. Allow me to list them for you.
Closets are usually small and enclosed. This makes them essentially containers. A closet can provide a sense of containment. To understand the benefits of this, you can think of what a womb provides a baby or what a clam shell provides a clam or what a bunker provides someone in a time of war. It is a buffer of protection. It makes the nervous system register that it is safe. And it can serve as a somatic antidote when we feel inundated or attacked or not defended or intruded on.
Closets are still. Never underestimate the power of stillness. Hardly anyone talks about the importance of periods of complete stillness. And stillness is something that is very hard to find in the modern world. In a state of stillness, the chaos settles, both external and internal. Stillness often triggers the slowing and deepening of breathing; which in and of itself activates the Vagus nerve and calms you down. In stillness, you can perceive the movements within your own being. With no stimulation from the outside world, you can attune to what is happening within you. Also, stillness can put you back in touch with the stillness of objective consciousness. It can put you into witness perspective rather than the temporal ego perspective. What is sometimes called the “big mind” in Buddhist circles. Stillness causes the nervous system to regulate itself. And all of this is an incredible antidote to reactivity. Stillness also helps you detach from doing mode and shift into being mode.
Closets are silent. In a world of so much noise, closets cancel that noise out. You can hear your thoughts in the absence of that noise. Aside from this, it gives your being a break. It does not have to process language or sounds and their meaning. It allows you to come out of over-stimulation mode. And you will notice that in silence, thoughts are consolidated, slowed and even stopped. Silence actually helps your consciousness to filter relevant information.
It is dark. This means no visual stimulus is coming into your being. Darkness triggers melatonin which causes us to calm down and even to sleep. Darkness is an antidote to stress chemicals. It induces deep relaxation and calms brain activity. In the dark, the brain produces a different frequency (what scientists might call alpha waves) and this makes you calm as well as increases creative thinking and problem solving.
Closets can pull you out of triggers so that you can move forward and think clearly again. A lot of this is down to the fact that all the elements inherent in a closet will de-activate the part of your nervous system that keeps you in that triggered state. To the opposite, they will activate the part of your nervous system that calms you and that helps you to think rationally. Also, in a closet, you do not have to be hypervigilant. And this is super healing if you are feeling anxious or triggered or if you are dealing with PTSD.
Closets are incredible for processing any and all emotions. Closets help you to feel the emotion, extract the information contained within the emotion and figure out what to do in response to the information that emotion contains. They are especially amazing for grief.
Closets are an antidote to shock. All of the elements inherent in a closet, cause a re-set of the nervous system. Trauma throws everything into chaos. When you limit all stimuli, while in a contained area that the brain ‘gets’ is safe and predictable, it can re-boot the system. It allows you to re-calibrate. Feeling the walls around you can orient your body in space, which grounds you in a way that opposes emotional flooding and dissociation.
As an interesting side note, this is why when a bird flies into a window (provided that they have not sustained too much physical injury) the best thing to do is to put the bird in a dark, enclosed box with air holes and lined with paper towels or soft cloth and then keep it in a quiet, warm, dark place for up to two hours. As a side note, in case you decide to do this, remember to observe the bird for signs of recovery and after two hours, take the box with the bird in it to a safe, quiet area away from any windows, take the lid off the box and step back away from the box, giving the bird space to feel safe to fly.
Closets cause all other things to be tuned out, except what is happening in your internal world. Because of this, it feels like closets simultaneously calm everything down, and intensity things in the internal world. Things like emotions, images, memories, thoughts and sensations. This makes closets excellent places to really tune-into ourselves to figure out what is going on with us or what our personal truth is. They are an excellent place for reflection. An absolutely exemplary place to do shadow work. They can increase your awareness immensely. All this leads to emotional organization, a sense of physiological, psychological and emotional calm, creativity and much better decision making.
A closet can be an ideal spot for meditation. Meditation is at its core, a mental exercise. And some people really do better with mental exercises when they are in an enclosed space, free from stimuli and distractions. They can focus. They can perceive the inner world. They find it much easier to engage with their own mind. Closets are also customizable and minimal. You can easily turn one into a kind of mini- meditation cave with minimal investment. And due to the small area, if you use essential oils or incense of any kind, the effect is very quick.
If you are going to engage in conscious closet work, make sure that your closet is well ventilated. That it is free of all hazards. And that you set it up/customize it so as to use it as a place that feels safe, grounded and intentional for you. Seeing as how most of us also keep our clothes and other items in the closet, just make sure that you de-clutter your closet. Clutter introduces a kind of chaos and over-stimulation to a space energetically. Clutter is bad for you. That being said, people often benefit immensely by being enclosed in a space that smells familiar and that smells like them and/or their partner. Where better than in their closet? Because of this, some people choose to do conscious closet work by sitting inside and amongst the fabrics of their hanging clothes.
To do conscious closet work, be intentional about it. Decide what the purpose for going into the closet is before you go in. And in alignment with this intention, decide what you are going to do in the closet. And also, decide how long being in there would suit your intention. To give you some idea of what I mean, some people decide to go in for twenty minutes to just be in total stillness and not do anything at all, no trying to work with or control their thoughts or emotions or anything. Just total surrender to stillness. Other people decide to go in for ten minutes to do a specific meditation. Other people decide to go in for an hour to process their thoughts and emotions about a situation they were in at work. Other people decide to go in to do a shadow work process, like the completion process and decide that they will come out whenever it feels totally complete. You get the idea. The closet will start to become a positive trigger for the very states that the closet, and your specific intention induces and so, your closet can actually become more effective over time.
Closets are an incredible tool for the human nervous system and for human consciousness in general. To generalize, less input means more nervous system recovery. Closets have the power to shift your nervous system from sympathetic dominance to parasympathetic dominance ie: to pull you out of fight or flight mode. A closet can signal to your body that you are safe and so, it is time to shift to rest, digest and repair mode. In that absence of stimulation, your brain and nervous system can slow down and decompress. A closet can act like a nervous system re-set, kind of like un-plugging and re-booting a technological device and it can help you to make far better decisions in your life. If you can get over the idea that a closet is only a space for children to be in, it may just become one of the most helpful places in your home. So, give it a try.
When it comes to abundance, which money is an integral part of in today’s world, it isn’t just about finding a way to get what you want. It’s about what is blocking you from getting what you want. Every person alive has internal blocks to getting what they want. And nearly every person alive has internal blocks related to money. But today, I’m going to reveal to you the number one thing that is blocking their financial abundance. I’m going to tell you what it is first and then explain it in total detail so you really get it and can apply this knowledge in your own life.
The number one thing that blocks people’s financial abundance is: Beliefs and their corresponding behaviors that block the things you want (beliefs that block money) but that maintain negative loyalties to the people you care about.
Human beings are a profoundly relationally dependent species. Our capacity to survive and thrive is dependent on our relationships. This is a beautiful thing because it could make us masters of interdependence and symbiosis. But to the opposite, it can open the door for some serious dysfunction. As a person your sense of survival and beyond that wellbeing is linked to your level of closeness and alignment with the people in your life. So, on a totally subconscious level, you adopt beliefs and tell yourself and everyone else stories that keep you aligned with, in confluence with, experiencing closeness with and allied to other people (most especially our early caregivers, such as your parents); but those beliefs and stories may be detrimental to your wellbeing and best interests. If these beliefs block you from what you want and need, they are detrimental.
So, just to be crystal clear, a negative loyalty pattern can take on many, many forms. But the function is the same: It is a belief and/or behavior that keeps you aligned with, in confluence with, experiencing closeness with and allied to another person (most especially our early caregivers, such as our parents); but that is detrimental to your wellbeing and best interests. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: What Is a Negative Loyalty Pattern?
So now you’re probably wondering, how does this exactly work. How does a negative loyalty pattern block financial abundance? To explain this, I’m going to give you some examples. Let’s say you have a mother who feels burdened by you, she doesn’t actually want to be caretaking you. And a lot of the elements of caretaking are about providership and therefore your mother is your first experience of abundance. You are likely to adopt a belief that you don’t deserve abundance in order to keep yourself feeling close to your mother. After all, if you did believe that you deserve abundance, what would that have meant about your mother and her relationship with you?
Or for example, let’s do a super common one. Say you’re a little toddler and you crawl towards the thigs you want and the people in your life keep picking you up and pulling you away from the things you are trying to reach. You may adopt the belief “I’m not going to get what I want in life, there is no point to going for it.” But this belief keeps you from facing that fact that the people in your life keep acting as an oppositional force to your desires, rather than a supporting force to your desires. It keeps you allied with them.
Or for example, say you grew up in a wealthy family and you spent your childhood always watching your dad working and making money and never having any time for you. So, you develop the belief that making money keeps you away from relationships. as a result, you feel resistance to focusing on making money and end up the one person in the family that isn’t very financially successful. But what you don’t see is that this belief, this story you tell yourself covers for the fact that your dad isn’t actually dedicated to having relationships, including with his kids. You never put it together that dad does make time for golf. He makes time for the things he wants to do. This belief about money can cover over for the reality that your dad did not want to put energy and time and effort into the relationship with you. The belief that money keeps you away from relationships limits your abundance because you won’t go for money. Because focusing on money will make you feel alone. It’s basically a built-in shock collar against money. But it does keep you more close to your father, more “with him” than admitting that it wasn’t money that kept him away from you, he chose to do that all on his own.
It is worth a special mention that beliefs around your worthiness or deserving of the things you want, have an especially direct link to these negative loyalty patterns that effect abundance.
Something important to get is that thoughts, most especially beliefs, they shape our perception of reality. And we behave according to our perception of reality. Beliefs create behavior. So, if we have these beliefs that are oppositional to the things we want, including money, we will be making decisions and acting in ways that are oppositional to getting the things we want. We will be acting in ways that are oppositional to money. It is in essence, a form of what we often call self-sabotage. The thing is, self-sabotage is really just about a part of us believing that a certain behavior is in fact in our best interests, even if it comes with serious consequences. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: There is No Such Thing as Self Sabotage.
Everyone has these beliefs that help them to stay connected to the people they love the most. And don’t let your anger or resistance fool you. You are probably still maintaining loyalty to people who you loved and were hurt by and who you think you hate or have even “let go of”!
So, how do you find these beliefs? And what do you do with them once you find them? You want to look at your desires.
As a person, you are constantly wanting. Identify something you want and then ask yourself, why am I not able to have that? And answer this question by making a list of reasons. There are likely to be several answers. I just want you to put down whatever comes to mind. You don’t have to be right. The goal is to get yourself to vomit up all kinds of thoughts that you have been thinking. For example: I want to be a millionaire. Why am I not able to have that? Who am I to be a millionaire. Everyone wants to be a millionaire; it doesn’t mean everyone can be. I don’t have any good ideas. The chance of me winning the lottery is like one in 80 million. Every millionaire I have ever met has a more aggressive, go getter personality than me. Etc.
Any question you could ever ask yourself regarding WHY you don’t have finances or the things you want, point to these beliefs as well. Such as: Why do other people have wealth, regardless of whether they are good people or not, and I don’t?
It is important to really get that money is really only a tool people use in order to get what they want. So, it isn’t about money, it’s about the things you want. But, you can do this exercise relative to something specific you want, or/and you can this exercise relative to money in and of itself.
These beliefs are inherent in any point of resistance you hit to what you want. I want fill in the blank (limit, limit, prevention, block). For example: I want money (money ruins society, money is hard to come by, the only way I can make more money is to work more and I am already too maxed out at work, no one I know has money etc).
Once you find these beliefs, with each one, ask yourself, if I were to maintain this belief to preserve my idea of someone or my view of someone, who would that someone be? And how would this believe manage to do that?
You can also ask yourself: Having this thing that I want… Maybe even having everything I could ever want… This would be a problem for who? And why would it be a problem for them? Based on the answer, you can also probably identify other beliefs that you have adopted to stay allied with them.
The good news is, once you see this emotional superglue purpose behind these beliefs, it loosens them in your being. After all, if we are telling ourselves this in order to maintain our closeness and loyalty to someone, is it really true? You can then change them. To change them, you want to ask yourself with each belief, can I know that this is 100%, beyond the shadow of a doubt true? You also want to spend a moment thinking about what kinds of thoughts you think, how you feel, what decisions you make, ways you act and actions you have taken and continue to take, or didn’t take and refuse to take when you believe that thought.
From there, you want to do the following:
Come up with alternative evidence and proof to destroy the belief a well as to destroy the emotional payoff you are getting from keeping that belief (prove it doesn’t keep you close/loyal to the person this belief serves that purpose for).
Choose what belief you would like to replace the previous one with.
Write down evidence to support this new belief and proof that backs up this new belief, so that you develop a belief in it instead.
So, let’s say that you discover the belief: It takes time to make money because there’s lots of steps you need to take. Let’s say that you realize that this belief would serve your father because he had to slowly climb the ladder and work hard to be successful. If you were to make more money and quickly, without needing to jump through the hoops that he had to jump through, you may feel a loss of belonging with him. The father-son relationship you grew up where he is teaching you about the world and how to make it at a man would change. You may feel like you surpassed your dad, and that is terrifying because suddenly it feels like you’re alone in the world. You may feel guilty or like a bad person for causing a potential self-esteem collapse in your dad, so you are trying to maintain your sense of goodness.
You ask yourself: It takes time to make money… Am I 100% sure that it is true? No. Then you ponder what kinds of thoughts you think, how you feel, what decisions you make, ways you act and actions you have taken and continue to take, or didn’t take and refuse to take when you believe that thought. The answer may be: I think about how I will never be able to buy a house in time to have kids. I see images of myself being so embarrassed by telling people I rent. I feel limited. I feel a sense of doom. I feel like I have to limit myself so as to save money. I never let myself do enjoyable things because I save all of my money. I keep my stable job, where I am limited as far as how much I can make. I don’t take any opportunities that seem risky, even if the financial rewards could be incredible. I act obnoxious towards other people because if they are excited about a financial opportunity, I shoot it down. I keep myself small and I hate myself for it because it isn’t authentic. I am so jealous of anyone who makes a success of themselves quickly.
From here, you find Alternative evidence to shoot holes in your belief that it takes time to make money and the emotional payoff you get. For example, hard work and time are not the only inputs for financial success. Offering value and solving a problem instantly matter as much or more. I am not actually a good person if I am limiting myself because I would be also limiting my father in terms of what he can achieve. I’m not actually close to my dad if he needs me to be smaller than he is to have a good relationship with him. Plenty of people make so much money every hour just be virtue of the job they do and it has nothing to do with time.
Now let’s say that the new belief that you may want to have could be that money can come quickly and easily. You come up with proof that this is true. For example, you might say: There were a few times where I landed a huge deal in one day because my client knew someone else looking for the solution I was offering. The way that technology is rapidly developing turns many people into overnight successes. The richest people in the world say that making money is not about time, it is about having the right idea.
Keep in mind that I have given you an example which gives you a taste of what you should be doing. In reality, you need to find far more proof for both shooting holes in the old belief and supporting the new belief.
If you are interested, you can also do turn arounds for a belief. Such as: Let’s say I have the belief: Money is hard to earn. Some examples of turn arounds for this belief are: Money is easy to earn. Poverty is hard to earn. Money is hard to be gifted. I am hard to earn. And challenge yourself to think outside the box so as to come up with at least four items of proof that this turn around is as true or more so than the original belief. If you really want to dive deep into how to do turn arounds for beliefs, Byron Katie’s process called THE WORK is great for this.
Because negative loyalty patterns are the number one block for finances, don’t forget to challenge any belief that having money or having any one thing that you want is oppositional to relationships. For example, if I get rich, I won’t belong anymore. Or money corrupts people.
In case you are interested, I have an entire vault of meditations that are designed to overhaul your mentality and personal vibration around abundance and finances. The Vault is here.
It is my intention that this exercise frees up those things that are keeping you away from whatever it is that you are wanting. And that as a result, you line up instantly with whatever it is that you have been wanting. Just remember that finances are a gateway to having what you want. But not if you believe that finances themselves are the limitation to having what you want.
People in general tend to feel quite confused and powerless when it comes to female sexuality. It is as if women are an enigma when it comes to sex. In general, we are looking for all women to be the same sexually, so they can follow a logical formula. It is here that I’m going to give you some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there is a major stand out thing about female sexuality that you can generalize about. You can consider this your foundation. And from there, you need to be able to differentiate between women and what each of them is aroused by.
The stand out thing when it comes to female sexuality is that the motivation for sex it is dependent on emotions. Visual and/or physical stimulation is not the primary trigger for a woman’s desire to have sex. Her desire to have sex is dependent on how she feels emotionally, most especially about you and with you.
In general, women need to feel emotional connection and emotional intimacy before wanting sex. This fosters a sense of security and safety because sex can and does lead to serious vulnerabilities for a woman. Some of these vulnerabilities are emotional, such as attachment. And some of them are physical, such as pregnancy. And something that you probably don’t know is that on a spiritual level, there must be strong polarization to create the kind of attraction that gives rise to incredible sex. There must be two opposite poles. The positive sexual pole for a woman is the heart area. The emotional center. This positive sexual pole has to be awakened and stimulated in order to really activate the yoni (the Sanskrit word for vulva and vagina) so that it will welcome you and let you in.
The way to actually get a woman in the mood to have sex with you is to take charge of her emotional experience. Especially the emotional experience she is having with you. Women tend to be very responsive by their very nature. They are emotionally responsive to whether you were there for her when she needed you earlier in the day or whether you prioritized something else. They are responsive to whether you are forgetting one of your responsibilities for the fourth time in a row and putting her in the position to have to do it herself or nag you about it. They are emotionally responsive to whether you are demonstrating that you are attuned to her body and her turn-ons or are in your own world, doing what you think you should do with a woman in general. They are emotionally responsive to whether you have bad hygiene and to what that may mean about you as a person and about how safe she is around you. They are emotionally responsive to whether you took time to figure out what makes her aroused and led her there or whether you just expected her to just be ready for it because you wanted her sexually. They are emotionally responsive to whether you are speaking and moving in a confident way, or whether you are speaking and moving in an insecure way. They are emotionally responsive to whether you ogle and talk about other women or whether you act in a way that makes her feel like what you desire is her. You get the point. The way you conduct yourself in the relationship in general, is what makes a woman feel how she feels emotionally with you. And this determines whether she wants to have sex with you or just isn’t feeling it.
I want you to think about how a woman would need to feel emotionally in order to want to have sex with you. Your answer is likely to be: To feel contained by me (If you want to learn more about this one, you can watch my video titled: Containment (What a Woman Needs From a Man in a Relationship). It may be: To feel desired by me. To feel valued by me. To feel like I love her body. To feel connected and close to me. To feel like she can trust me. To feel attracted to me (keep in mind that female attraction goes far beyond just physical attraction. In fact, women tend to be far more attracted to a person based on the way he behaves than based on how he looks). It may be: She needs to feel that she respects you and admires me. To feel protected by me. All this is true. She needs to emotionally feel a way that would inspire her to want you inside of her.
While the way that she is emotionally feeling with you in the relationship in general is the single biggest determining factor of her arousal and her desire to have sex, you can also dictate the way she feels in a more microcosmic way in the sexual interaction itself. You can focus on making a woman feel a certain way in the relationship with you in general. And you can also focus on making a woman feel a certain way when you want to arouse her so as to engage in sex. For example, I could do things in my day-to-day life with a woman that make her feel like I value her. I could also do things that makes her feel valued “in the bedroom” in order to arouse her. Women tend to have a responsive desire when it comes to sex, meaning that rather than the desire just spontaneously showing up, it comes after arousal begins. This means, you can help her to get there. When it comes to women in general, it is a really good idea to accept that in order for her to desire to have sex with you in the way you want her to desire it, she needs to be aroused first.
Plenty of women have sex even when they are not aroused and are not actually emotionally feeling what is necessary to be aroused. And guess what? This is also largely down to emotions. For example, wanting that attention, a sense of being desired, a sense of it enhancing security in the relationship, a sense of wanting to express love to her partner. A sense of closeness with the person, a sense of her partner being pleased and thus enhancing her feeling of approval, relational security and belonging. Many women do this because they feel doing this is the necessary transaction to keep receiving any need that a person meets for her in a relationship, be it provider-ship or protection or emotional intimacy. Some women do it simply to avoid perceived negative consequences. Human beings are complex because we do not simply use sex for reproduction or for physical pleasure. Instead, sex serves many functions. In fact, people have hundreds of observable and study-able distinct reasons for having sex.
Even the core of what each woman is individually most aroused by is down to emotions. Even though this is where you start to see some serious variability between one woman’s sexuality and the next. Everyone has a unique sexuality. And each person’s unique sexuality is a direct reflection of their deepest traumas and deepest desires. And I’m not just talking about desires in the bedroom. I’m talking about desires in their life in general. What you get out of the specific sexual experience that really gets you aroused, is in fact, something emotional. Everyone has a “thing” sexually. We can call this a fetish. But some people’s “thing” isn’t what society would traditionally call a fetish. This is why, unless you have a traditional fetish, it is often so hard for people to figure out what their “thing” is. Identifying what uniquely arouses the woman in your life, so that you can identify the emotional component inherent in that thing, is the key to being not only the best sex she ever had in her life person, but also the best relationship she ever had in her life person. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: Decode What Your Sexuality Says About You.
Women are sexual beings. They can derive deep levels of pleasure out of sex. Provided that you understand that the foundation of a woman’s sexuality is how she emotionally feels. And provided that you put the time and energy into understanding the unique intricacies and specifics of the woman in your life.
When it comes to cheating, it is unpopular to talk about why people do it. This is because suggesting that a person has a reason to do it, makes people feel like the blame is shifting to the person who was cheated on. As if it isn’t bad enough to be cheated on by someone, try adding “oh and by the way, it’s your fault they did!” to the equation. Never the less, people do have reasons for doing what they do. So, it benefits us to actually talk about it. While there are a variety of reasons why a person might cheat on their partner, for example craving autonomy or desire for novelty or validation of one’s worth or lack of emotional or sexual connection with one’s partner or escaping responsibility or relationship dissatisfaction etc. There is one glaring primary reason why men cheat. And there is one glaring primary reason why women cheat. And the reason isn’t the same.
The main reason that women cheat is: Neglect. Neglect is about not meeting a woman’s needs. Neglect implies lack. When a woman experiences a lack in an area of need, she is unhappy. She either suffers some form of starvation for that need or has to find a way to get that need met. And if she can’t get that need met by her partner, she may seek that need outside of her partner, with another person (such as another man). By far and away the biggest form of neglect that women respond to by cheating is emotional neglect. What is emotional neglect? In the context of this conversation, it is when the emotional needs that a woman needs and expects from her partner, are not met.
Emotional neglect is about what isn’t there, rather than about what is there. It is an “I’m not there for you and I’m not there with you… even when we happen to be in the same physical vicinity.” It is a lack of all of the things that a person needs to feel emotionally good in a relationship and therefore, a lack of a great deal of what a person needs in life to feel emotionally good (because your quality of life is down to the quality of your relationships). It is the affection that isn’t shown. The presence that isn’t granted. The absence of emotional support. The withdrawal of attention. The protection that isn’t being given. The ignoring of needs. The expectation that you meet your needs yourself. The deficiency of nurturing. The total refusal to seek or grant understanding. The disengagement. The indifference that is being demonstrated. The apathy towards the other person and towards the relationship. The emotional dismissal. The unavailability. The disconnection etc.
The natural reaction to emotional neglect is to try to get the other person to not neglect you. And there are all kinds of strategies that you might employ to try to get them to stop neglecting you. From calm, rational conversations about how you feel to becoming whatever you think they want to violent outbursts to seduction techniques to eliciting jealousy to threats to creating emergency scenarios to feigned withdrawal and the list goes on and on. Hopefully in this list, you are able to recognize some of your own behaviors in relationships and/or recognize the behaviors women you know have exhibited in the past.
Emotional neglect is one of the most tormenting experiences you can go through in a relationship. Many people who have experienced both, say it is worse than overt physical abuse. Sometimes, emotional neglect is something that a person isn’t choosing to do, not even on a subconscious level. Rather, it is a byproduct of circumstances. For example, a person might be emotionally neglectful because due to their own emotionally neglectful childhood, they truly have no template for what to even do to be there for and with someone emotionally. Or a person may have chosen a career or be in a life situation that quite literally prevents them from being present in a sufficient way, such as being incarcerated or working for the military or some other career that implies absence. Or if someone has an illness. You get the picture. When this is the case, the emotional neglect is not willful. It still does the damage that emotional neglect does. But there can be inherent workability in the relationship because the neglect is not willful.
Emotional neglect becomes willful when on a conscious or even more commonly, subconscious level, a person does not want to be there for the other person and be there with the other person. And believe me, there are people for whom this is the case… That a person may want the benefits of having another person in their life, but not want the pressure of caring for and tending to their emotional needs and emotional wellbeing. They don’t want to have the responsibility of doing the things that the other person needs in order to feel emotionally good in the relationship. And this willful neglect, is inherently unworkable because the neglect is serving the person in some way. Just because someone is in a relationship, doesn’t mean they want to put energy into making that relationship a feel-good relationship if doing so would require something from them that they don’t want to do. A great many people have needs that can only be met in the context of a relationship. So, they enter into one. But they do not want the pressure of being responsible for how the other person feels in that relationship. They just want the other person to magically feel good (and most especially, good about them) no matter what they do or don’t do. To understand willful neglect, it would greatly benefit you to watch my video titled: Breaking Free From Willful Emotional Neglect in a Relationship.
When a woman is being neglected by a partner, the deprivation and the reality that her very real needs are not being met, start to corrode her wellbeing. This pattern creates a state of desperation. She will fight to try to get her partner to meet these needs. And if her partner is not responsive, she will reach a point where she has to acknowledge and accept that she is neglected and in turn, give up on trying to get her partner to not neglect her (because trying causes her to sink deeper into both lack and starvation). And so, she decides she must willingly starve or get her needs met elsewhere. If she has to get her needs met elsewhere, because her partner is not meeting them, she is not experiencing containment. So, she seeks a new container so to speak.
If neglecting a woman is not willful, if it simply comes from not knowing what a woman’s needs are or how to meet them, things can change for the better. All you need to do is to learn what needs she feels a lack of and bring more of that thing she is lacking to her. To be a true allied partner in her needs being met. But, if the neglect is willful, it’s game over.
Here is where I’m going to challenge you a bit. No person ever relates to themself as being neglectful. It means that it is highly likely that a person who is willfully neglecting their partner, does not see that they are doing this. And it is very hard to get them to see it. After all, it is a direct assault to their self-concept. It is to see themself as the bad guy. Or, to do what they really, really, do not want to do. A person who is neglectful will be full of excuses as to why they are not providing what the woman in their life needs.
It’s not possible to be in a good relationship and take zero responsibility for doing what it would take to ensure the other person’s wellbeing. Entering into a relationship implies that everything you do and fail to do, impacts them either positively or negatively and vice versa. Everyone wants a relationship because of what they can get out of a relationship. But not everyone wants to give or do what it takes to actually create a working relationship that feels good to both people in it. Unless you get into a conscious relationship with someone where you both agree upon them not meeting specific needs of yours (and therefore you don’t expect it because you agree to getting those needs met elsewhere), a good relationship requires true positive ownership… the opposite of neglect.
Though emotional neglect is the number one reason why women cheat. A woman may cheat in response to other forms of neglect as well. For example, if she feels like she has to fend for herself financially, she may feel neglected and thus may cheat as a means to securing another man who will fend for her financially. Or for example, a woman who is with a man who fails to protect her is lacking protection. She is being neglected in the area of protection. So, she may seek that protection and sense of safety from another man. In knowing this, you may have this feeling that if you don’t perfectly meet a woman’s needs, she’s off to find another partner. As if a woman is just a user who doesn’t care about you beyond whether you are perfectly meeting all her needs or not. This is not true. It is that a woman cannot feel happy and healthy and contained and truly loved when the person she is in a relationship with leaves her to fend for herself and in a state of lack in an area of need. When a person is able to leave her to fend for herself and in a state of lack in an area of need and still expects her to stay committed to the relationship, it becomes a “Suffer So I Can Feel Loved” dynamic. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my video that is quite literally titled: The Suffer So I Can Feel Loved Relationship Dynamic.
If you are a woman who is tempted to cheat because you are feeling neglected, you need to become conscious of what needs are being neglected and bring those needs to your partner. Make your partner aware of them. This way your partner has and understanding of your needs and also has the opportunity to meet those needs. With regards to some of your needs, you may be able to get those needs met by multiple sources, not just your partner. And your partner can be an advocate for those other people meeting needs that he or she cannot meet or do not want to meet. A partner should not expect you to starve for a need. But there will be needs that you need and/or want to have met by your partner specifically, otherwise you can’t be fulfilled having that person as your partner. In a relationship, if your partner does not respond to you suffering because your needs are not met, the answer isn’t to cheat. It isn’t to betray them. Rather than choosing to starve or choosing to cheat, make a conscious choice. The conscious choice may be to change the terms of the relationship, so there is flexibility for you to get your needs met or to exit the relationship so as to find another partner who does meet your needs.
If any of you watching this video are feeling resistance to the idea of expecting others to meet your needs or have the belief that each person is responsible for their own needs, I’d like you to watch my video titled: Dependency Needs, The Thing That No One Will Accept They Have.
If fidelity is something you want, one way to be empowered about it (rather than just leaving it up to the other person to be faithful no matter what) is making sure the woman in your life does not feel neglected. For this reason, a powerful question to ask the woman in your life is: Is there any way that you currently feel neglected by me? And act on the answer you receive.
Passivity is one of the absolute worst things for a man. If a man wants to kill off his masculinity and life force energy, all he has to do is be passive. Well… seeing as how this is deeply detrimental, not only to men themselves but to everyone in human society, in this video, we will be diving deep on this topic of passivity and men and what to do about it.
To start, what does it mean to be passive? It means to get in the back seat rather than the front seat in your life. This includes in your relationships. When you get in the back seat, you don’t initiate. You don’t make decisions. You don’t lead. You don’t communicate, or you communicate in a lackluster way. You don’t express your opinions. Your behavior is submissive. You defer to other people. You don’t bring your thoughts, feelings, needs, desires and preferences forward into the relationship. You are disengaged. You spend your time in avoidance of the things that you don’t want, rather than driving toward what you do want and proactively taking unwanted things on as challenges. You don’t hold yourself accountable to standards or goals you set. You don’t take charge. You don’t assume responsibility and you certainly don’t assume ownership, rather you leave others to take responsibility and ownership. You don’t create and implement plans. You leave things to others. You wait to be told what to do. You may lack motivation. You don’t establish, maintain, express or enforce your boundaries. You either don’t set goals. Or if you do, you don’t hold yourself accountable to reaching those goals.
If you were to look at masculinity through a purely energetic lens, you would see masculine energy as a forward moving energy. The masculine polarity contains the qualities of action, direction, assertion, movement, strength, focus, generosity, encouragement, transformation and growth. All of which are active, forward moving energies. Passiveness is an oppositional force to these energies.
When a man is not active and proactive, he starts to exhibit passive aggressive behavior. After all, passive aggression is how people express negative feelings and try to assert boundaries in an indirect way.
When a man is passive, he is not the one making the decisions and actively participating in his life or relationship and because of this, all the pressure is on the other person to make the decisions and direct the relationship and direct how both their life and his life goes. The other person is likely to drive things in a direction that he won’t like. And when he doesn’t like it, he is likely to become passive aggressive rather than proactive and direct about steering things in a different direction.
When a man is passive, he will lose his self-esteem. Let me explain… A man will not feel good about himself when he is in the back seat of his life and his relationships. He will start to depend on other people in ways that cause his to lose faith in his own capacities. He will not do the things that lead to the building of confidence and self-esteem. The lack of control he will feel over his own life will make him feel powerless and start to see himself as smaller and less powerful than he actually is.
He will experience a negative feedback loop whereby his passive behavior will lead to negative results, which will make him more passive, which will lead to even worse results. And as he slides down this spiral, he will start to see himself in a more and more and more negative light. Believing more and more in his own inadequacies and in being incapable.
When a man is passive, he will in fact lose energy. At first glance, it may seem like if someone is being passive, they are not exerting much energy, and so, they are laid back and are conserving energy. But this is not how it works with men. When a man is active and proactive, it works in much the same way that certain car batteries currently work, the ones where they charge by the car driving. Being proactive shifts a man’s energy and focus from reacting to problems (which depletes energy) to both anticipating and shaping his environment and life experience. This in turn, gives him a sense of empowerment, control and accomplishment. And this in turn reduces stress levels and motivates him. It creates a positive feedback loop. Being proactive where he takes the initiative and takes action towards what he desires, builds his belief in his ability to succeed. And this causes him to have a more positive outlook on life as well as a higher level of confidence to take on challenges. And this massively boosts his energy levels.
Being passive is not natural for a man. When a man does this, it is in response to some kind of trauma. Trauma that needs to be addressed and resolved. For this reason, if you are a man who is struggling with being passive, it is a very good idea to do The Completion Process. In case you are interested, I have an e-course which teaches you how to do this process in depth, I also wrote a book about it. Or if you wish, you can also find a practitioner to help you go through the process by visiting www.completionprocess.com.
Now, let’s look at what happens in a male-female relationship when a man is passive, because this is a true disaster. Keep in mind when I describe what I am about to describe in man to woman terms that this can be a real issue in gay relationships as well, because polarity still exists in these relationships, even if that polarity is more fluid and exchangeable.
When a man is passive in a relationship with a woman, he has flipped the polarity in his relationship, destroying the energetic dynamic between masculine and feminine energy. Unknowingly, he is requiring her to display masculine traits and provide him with containment and by doing so, he is flipping roles, which will feel unhealthy and painful for both of them and it will destroy their attraction to each other. How does this work practically? If a man is passive, then it leaves everything to the woman in his life. She has to be the one to make the decisions, for both him and her. She has to be the one in charge, leading and taking control. She has to be the one to initiate everything. He is relying and depending on her to take responsibility and ownership of everything, including him, which will create a dynamic where she is more like his mother than partner. He is making her carry the weight of the relationship on her own. He is making her decide on the direction of the relationship and he is also making her be the one to lead it there. He is requiring her to be strong. He is making her be the one out in front with no buffer and no containment. With the absence of this containment, she will start to become incredibly anxious and resentful. Because she doesn’t feel safe, she will become progressively more and more controlling. When a man gets into this dynamic with a woman, he tends to feel totally emasculated and powerless. There is likely to be an air of constant tension and constant conflict in the relationship. He will feel controlled. She will lose respect for him and he will feel disrespected. He will lose his attraction to her. He will not feel needed. He may feel like a minion or servant in the relationship. Because she doesn’t have containment, she will be under so much pressure and not have her needs met to the degree that she will not be satisfied in the relationship. As a result, she will not be able to hold him in positive regard. She will start to criticize him and will lose her attraction to him, after all, attraction is about polarity. And this, will corrode his self-esteem. When a man’s self-esteem suffers in a relationship, he tends to withdraw. This only further leaves her on her own with all the pressure, so she has to become even stronger and harder and more masculine to cope with the world. And her negative feedback will increase, leading him to believe he can never make her happy. Essentially, it creates a downward spiral.
As a man, you cannot be passive. Really being active and proactive and stepping fully into your masculine polarity and masculine energy is central to having the life you want, feeling good about yourself and having relationships that works for you. So, let’s look at ten key components of being active/proactive rather than passive.
Be in an active mindset. This starts with deciding to be on the side of causation. Do not wait for things to happen to you. Recognize that you have the power to influence situations and bring about desired outcomes. This means, wherever possible, commit to being in the position of cause instead of effect. This requires a mindset shift. We live in a universe based on the law of cause and effect. This means we will do things that affect others and others will do things that affect us. Any time you are in a situation that feels like you are at the effect of someone or something else, ask how could I adapt to the reality of this situation so as to switch back into the position of cause instead of effect? Actively seek out potential ways to make your desired outcome come about and take action when you find them. When we are passive, we are getting in the back seat of our life experience. We are convinced that our life experience and the various spheres of our life are dependent on external factors. And as a result, we are essentially putting ourselves in the hands of others. No matter what situation you may find yourself in, consider how can things related to your wellbeing be in your hands instead of in the hands of others? Where do you think the power lies in this situation? How can you switch the situation so that the power lies with you?
Create a Vision. Both a vision for yourself and for your relationships. Being proactive in your life and in your relationship implies taking action. But that action needs to be in a certain direction. It needs to be for something and in service of something. The action is designed to bring something about. This implies that you need to have a vision for what you want and need and value. Both regarding yourself/your life and regarding your relationship. What you are looking to do, is to build a vision of the life you are trying to build. When you create a vision for yourself, you have something to aim at. Something for your choices and action to lend themselves to creating. And you can check all your decisions and behaviors and actions against whether they are in alignment with your vision, or are out of alignment with that vision. And remember, do not just passively let your relationship happen to you. And don’t make your partner lead it. You must lead your relationship towards a vision that is in alignment with what both you and they want.
Move your body! Never ever underestimate the power of moving your body and exercising and simply physically doing things when it comes to getting out of a passive state of being. Sometimes we are waiting for motivation in order to take any action. But what if I told you that action can bring about motivation? Many men find that moving their body works like a fire melting through the ice of passiveness, even when that passiveness has to do with other areas of their life. For this reason, many active men will choose to use exercise to catalyze themselves into a more active, proactive state in other areas of their life, such as their career or dating or taking on the challenge of problems they may be facing. Physically moving boosts your energy. It causes your cells to actually produce more energy and triggers the release of chemicals that improves your mood, helping you feel more on top of things, rather than underneath or at the mercy of them. Moving your body, exercising and physically doing things, forces you out of passivity. So, make yourself do it.
Take responsibility and ownership over things. Being active rather than passive implies actively taking responsibility and actively taking ownership. Take ownership of things that need to be done, handle things, take responsibility for tasks and projects. Help guide and lead others regarding things that need to be done. Make sure things are done well. Initiate the doing of things, the completion of them and holding yourself accountable for the outcome. Self-assign yourself to things. Do things without having to be told to do them. Proactively solve problems that arise. When a person is passive, they leave things to others. Do not leave things to others! And remember, you must follow through.
Put energy into learning and understanding things. How does this relate to being active rather than passive? Knowledge is power. The more information you have and the more you know about something, the greater your confidence will be to take action relative to that situation. You will know what action to take. And this will automatically make you far more active. Knowledge empowers you to feel able to take the lead. Remember that keen observation, active listening and questioning are key components to developing a thorough understanding. But do not be passive to getting this information and learning what needs to be learned. Seek out that information and learn and seek to understand like you are hungry for it.
Do not fixate on what you can’t do. Look for what you can do. When you concern yourself with what you can’t do, rather than what you can do, you will end up feeling powerless and defeated. If a door is closed, put your energy towards looking for other doors and windows that might be open. Long story short, to own your power in any situation so as to be able to take action, you have to shift focus towards what you CAN do. In whatever situation you find yourself in, ask yourself: How and in what ways can I create, direct, influence or do something so as to bring about what I want?
Recognize, feel and build your confidence. We tend to be passive when we don’t feel our own power and don’t see our own value. You will become more passive the more you are focused on what you have no confidence in, relative to the situation you are in. Don’t simply fixate on what you don’t have confidence in. Instead, consider, what do you have confidence in? Make a list. If you recognize where you have confidence in your life, the areas where you don’t have confidence won’t feel like they diminish you. For example, you may feel totally confident with doing math correctly or with cooking or being able to or fix a car or with understanding complex concepts or with organizing. Really recognize and lean back on the confidence that you currently take for granted. From there, consider: What is it that you have no confidence in relative to the situation you are in? How could you increase your confidence in that situation? In what ways could you learn and grow in that area so as to build your confidence in the areas causing that lack of confidence? Remember, at one point in time, none of us felt confident walking. Now we are so confident about it that we take it so much for granted that we would not even think of putting it on the list of things we are confident about. Lean back on what you are confident about so as to be able to take on the challenge of building confidence in whatever you do not feel confident about.
Assert Yourself. In this context, to assert yourself is to put yourself into the situation at hand and to put yourself into the relationship. What is you? You is your thoughts, feelings, opinions, needs, desires, energy and action. You need to put that into the situations at hand. You need to put that into your relationships. What might this look like? No more sitting back and observing, rather stepping forward and actively participating. Bringing your needs forward to other people, including the woman in your life by clearly communicating them. Stepping up and taking charge of problems that present themselves. Making your voice heard by expressing yourself in a clear and direct way. Standing your ground rather than giving in. Upholding your boundaries. Clearly expressing your opinion. Standing up for yourself and for others. Initiating difficult conversations. Offering your ideas and suggestions. Using body language that is confident. Maintaining eye contact. Do not withhold yourself.
Create forward movement. Imagine you were watching your life third person. Imagine following yourself for a day in your life. Are there areas of your life where you feel stagnation? What choices could you make (and enact) right now to bring forward movement into those areas of your life? Masculinity is a direct, forward moving energy. When you make a decision, you open the door to what you want and close the door to what you don’t want. This prevents you from scattering your energy in different directions. It ensures that your vital energy will move in one direction with force and direction, like a missile locked on a target. A big part of moving forward is the willingness to take risks and learn how to turn mistakes into beneficial lessons to propel you forward even faster. Stagnation is the opposite of masculine energy. When you are unwilling to make mistakes, you stagnate and the masculine energy within you becomes suppressed. No more hiding from fears. If you’re committed to embodying your masculinity, it is time to face your fears head on and not tolerate stagnancy in any of the areas in your life.
Be an active giver. You will receive tons of love when you are in your masculine energy. In fact, you will receive far more of everything you are wanting, including love when you are in your masculine energy. That said, masculinity is not a passive receiver of love. It is an active giver of love. This means, initiate. This means do. This means give. Be a transmitter. Masculinity is generous; it isn’t stingy with itself or with its resources. Be an active giver. Take advantage of opportunities to give when they arise, but don’t just passively wait for opportunities to arise.
Being passive will deplete you. It will prevent you from being in the masculine polarity. It will put you out of alignment with your own power. It will flip the polarity in your relationships, which in and of itself leads to all kinds of unwanted consequences. It will make it so you end up somewhere totally undesirable in your life. So, operate in life with these questions on your mind: Is what I am doing active and proactive, or is it passive? And how could I be more active and proactive in this situation? And follow through on the answers you come up with.
Relationships are one of the hottest topics in the world. Why is this the case? Because life is relationships. Therefore, a happy life is down to the quality of our relationships. Because of this, people seek out experts who can help them with information and advice on relationships. Naturally, people care about properly vetting the source of this information and advice. And doing so is really hard, especially when the metrics that people are using to decide whether someone is a credible expert are outdated.
I’m sure you are already aware of this, but very shortly after I stepped into this purpose of mine, the barrage of character attacks started. Ever since then, it has been like walking through a battlefield of adversaries, intent on stripping away any and all credibility they can. And they didn’t stop with me. They went after anyone who is associated with me; anyone who follows the content I produce, destroying their credibility too. This has been the hell of my life in so many more ways than anyone in the public knows. And it has put people who openly follow my content in a horrible position as well. It has sewn fear and doubt and distrust into the public about me and anyone who associates with me as well as the content that I put out into the world. Relationships is one of the topics that I teach the most extensively about. So naturally, the opposition has sought to directly discredit me in this area. The backbone of their strategy being to say that no one should listen to me about relationships because of my many “relationship failures”. When people tell you that you should distrust something because it could be dangerous or bad for you, it has an effect. It can’t not. For this reason, I’m going to put some points before you that may help you to better trust the information I share and content I produce regarding relationships. And I’m going to do this point by point.
I have come to this planet with the intention of lending my knowledge and energies to the reduction of suffering. What lies at the root of human pain? Relationships. Painful relationships are the single biggest source of suffering for the human race. And people are terrible at relationships. The human race’s current inability to have a symbiotic relationship with each other and with the other life forms that call earth home, is the single biggest source of suffering for most of the other species on this planet. The human race’s inability to create a good relationship with the very planet upon which it lives, is perhaps the biggest threat to the survival of the human race. So, people being able to create a society that is conducive to happiness rather than suffering is down to the mastery of relationships. The ending of war is down to the mastery of relationships. Human survival itself is down to the mastery of relationships. And as such, relationships have been my logical study and obsession, since I was a child. Years and Years and Years of obsessive study.
I did not come into this life with a clean slate. I came in with lots of information, including bigger picture information about relationships within the context of the universe itself. I am tapped into something much bigger than most people are.
Humanity is in the dark ages when it comes to relationships. And people find it very hard to see outside of their own current paradigm. They find it very hard to question the status quo, which they simply accept as right and good and normalize. They find creativity when it comes to relationships threatening because boxes make people feel secure. The mastery of relationships requires you to step outside these paradigms and question them and examine them from the outside. But in an insane society, the sane person is the odd one out. The one who is treated as if they are the one that is insane. You will be judged according to the current paradigm that people are stuck in. This is how it is with humanity. For a very long time in human history people knew without a doubt that marriage should be purely for economic alliance, political gain and perpetuation of family lineage. Now, that idea horrifies people. Now people know without a doubt that marriage should be for love. Today, most people know without a shadow of a doubt that people are monogamous and life is about finding that special one that is meant for you. Yet experts in the fields of sociology, psychology, anthropology and evolutionary biology don’t agree. In fact, it is a topic of serious debate. People find it very hard to be sexually faithful. You’d think that if people were naturally monogamous, they wouldn’t have to try so hard not to cheat. And many people have consensually non-monogamous relationships, way more than you are aware of. They just don’t go around announcing it in a world where people’s characters are condemned for it and their lives are ruined because of it. Back in the medieval era, people knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if a woman had twins, she had committed adultery and the two children had different fathers. That the first born was the pure, legitimate and intended child and the second was the evil counterpart. So, the second born twin was often abused. And on many occasions, left to die. Look at the effect this would have had on relationships. Relationships between husband and society and the mother. Relationships between the twins. Relationships between parents and children. Today, we know how both fraternal and identical twins actually happen. We think they are adorable. We dress them in matching outfits. The moral of the story is, if someone comes along who understands relationships better than the current people of the day understand relationships, they are treated like the crazy one.
I currently have and have had a lot of relationships with a lot of people and around the globe. I’ve had lots of romantic relationships. Lots of friendships. Lots of adversarial relationships. Lots of business relationships. Lots of family relationships. Lots of teacher student relationships. I have lived in an intentional community type setting for over 20 years. That will teach you to master relationships really fast. I’ve had relationships with many children. I am also a parent. Lots of relationship experience recommends a person. When a person has had few relationships and those relationships have been the ones they have stuck to for the totality of their life, they are only learning how to have a relationship within that limited field. They are not navigating the incredible differences and complexities and difficulties and gifts of having relationships with a wide variety of people. Also, if a person has had many relationships hit trouble and come to an end, that too provides tons of experience. To use an analogy, if you set off in a boat with a captain who has been in many ship wrecks, are you going to simply decide that this means he is a shitty captain? Would you rather be in a boat with a captain that has only sailed in one area his whole life and who has never been in a ship wreck? Or might it be possible that a captain who has sailed in waters all over the world and has been in many ship wrecks, knows a whole lot more. More about what to do and not do. More about oceans in general. More about boats. More about dangers. More about strategies for success and failure. What if this is the case with relationships as well?
Let’s take a look at Teal’s many “relationships failures”. To be able to make this claim, you have to be able to define what makes a relationship a failure. What does it mean for a relationship to fail? Most people who put this argument before the public are judging relationship failure as a relationship coming to an end. Really, they are completely focused on romantic relationships only. So, relationship success is defined according to longevity of romantic relationships. There are several problems with this.
This first is, just because people are fixated on romantic partnership doesn’t mean that is the most important relationship that a person can have and it certainly is not the only relationship in someone’s life. I have had the same best friend for 31 years. There are people who spend day in and day out with me that I have lived with for eleven years.
The second problem is, when a romantic relationship ends, but a person still maintains a close relationship with that same person, technically the relationship didn’t end. It just went from one kind of relationship to another. And this kind of transfer from a romantic relationship to a friendship is something that I specialize in doing, including in my own personal life.
The third problem is, if a relationship ending means that it has failed, this implies that all relationships are meant to last. Well, the ultimate truth is, because of the nature of this universe, no relationship actually ever ends. Even if in the physical dimension, it appears that you go separate ways and never again share the same space and time with someone. But, entertaining the human perception of a relationship ending, many relationships have a finite purpose in a person’s life experience. They are meant to play a specific part in a person’s life at a specific time. We wouldn’t say that a person’s relationship with their kindergarten teacher failed because they are no longer in a teacher – student relationship with them. We only say that a relationship failed in the context of friendship and partnership (especially marriage) because we have decided that these relationships SHOULD last a lifetime. But what if this isn’t the case? All relationships are valuable, even if they are horrific. All offer lessons. All cause you to become more aware and more self-aware. All have a purpose. All introduce new things to you. All are part of your personal evolution. And therefore, to say that the relationship has failed if it has ended, is not accurate.
The fourth problem is, even though I can point to so many relationships in my own life where there is longevity, defining success according to longevity is not intelligent. While most people want a relationship to last for their entire life, there are plenty of relationships that last people’s whole lives that are dysfunctional. In fact, dysfunction is how the vast majority of people accomplish longevity. So, longevity is not such a reliable metric of whether a relationship is good. If you want to understand more about this, you can watch my video titled: Longevity Is Not Necessarily a Measure of Success or Health in a Relationship.
The fifth problem is, people have an uncanny way of assuming that if I have had many romantic relationships that have ended, the problem must be me. They see me, rather than any number of other things as the common denominator. As if I (or any person) could make a relationship work singlehandedly if I were truly good at relationships. That isn’t how relationships work.
The sixth problem is, people don’t see the many factors that go against me specifically being able to have a romantic partnership that lasts a lifetime. So, let me give you a taste.
A. I am a reflector. And I am a reflector beyond measure. To get into a relationship with me, is to be in a direct relationship with yourself. Especially with those things that you do not see about yourself. And this is great if what is being reflected feels good. But what about when what is being reflected doesn’t feel good? And there is no off switch for this reflection. The pressure to be conscious is always on the people around me. And most people want to be able to choose when to look in the mirror and when not to. To be in any kind of relationship with me, is to have your ego burn in the fire of awakening. And people often find out that who they really are, is different to who they sold themselves to be at the beginning of their relationship with me. So, a great many men “find themselves” by being with me, but come to discover that who they truly are is different than who they thought they were upon entry into the relationship with me and what they truly want in a partnership with a woman is something different than me.
B. I know it isn’t politically correct to say it, but I have been very sexually attractive since I hit puberty. Contrary to popular opinion, it is much harder to find a compatible partner when this is the case. Instead, you end up lost in an ocean of men, all of whom will do anything to be with you. Including deceive themselves and you into thinking they are exactly what they know you are looking for in a man. If you want to understand more about this one, you can watch my video titled: Pretty Privilege? Why it is So Hard to Be a Beautiful Woman.
C. I am famous. If there were ever a force that made relationships impossible, it would be fame. Nothing reveals the horrors of the human ego quite like fame. It is hard to maintain relationships when you don’t have the pressure of the public eye and press and the horrific way people behave around fame. This is a pressure most people and most relationships cannot handle. It corrodes them completely. Most people are not actually compatible to a life where there is fame involved.
D. I am a successful woman. I have an international career. I wish I had been there to warn my younger self about the nightmare that being a successful woman would unleash upon my relationships with men. Gender bias is an absolute reality in our human world. All people have gender bias whether they want to have it or not. It is imbedded in the subconscious. To generalize, men feel pathetic and are made to feel pathetic by society when they step into a relationship with a woman who is perceived as “bigger” that he is in any way. Even more pathetic if he gets into a supportive role to a woman’s career success in a relationship. So, this creates three standard experiences. The first is that a man steps into the relationship and starts feeling bad about himself. And decides that he has to go off and focus in his own worldly success, otherwise he can’t feel good about himself within society and can’t feel like a man if you feel bigger to him in that you have more worldly power than he does. The second is, a man steps into the relationship and it turns out to be something he wanted to do because he is actually responsibility averse and passive. He is looking for a woman who is bigger than he is, because like a mother, he is hoping you will take all the pressure and all the responsibility. He loves a woman who is competent and can fend for herself and him. The exact opposite of what you need of course. Essentially, you end up with a little boy masquerading as a man and in a flipped polarity dynamic. Third, a successful man steps in. A man who is engaged in his own successful career, essentially a power couple dynamic. And the relationship goes south even faster. First, because your respective careers call you in different directions. You don’t have a common goal. You are not really living a together life. Rather, you end up like two passing ships in the night. Neither can prioritize the other. And each carries a lot of pressure. Pressure which implies the need for support, which is being given to you both by other people rather than each other. So, you naturally drift apart and grow closer to the people who are actually there with you, actually supporting you in the respective experiences you are having. Because you have the same needs, needs which neither of you can offer each other. And you offer the same things in a relationship, neither of you really values getting those things. There is no energy exchange. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: Why Successful Women Struggle To Find Love.
The seventh problem is that unfortunately, I come from a history in this life of extremely severe abuse. It should come as absolutely no surprise that I have been navigating a disorganized attachment for the totality of my life. Having a disorganized attachment makes relationships extremely challenging. You have to work much harder than most people to be able to make relationships work. But again, this recommends me as a relationship expert. I have personal experience with both the worst kinds of human relationships as well as the best kinds of human relationships. To be straight with you, a person with a secure attachment does not experience the contrast necessary to become a relationship expert.
Eighth, I know enough about the parenting relationship to know not to boast about the incredible relationship I have with my son. A person’s parenting is evident in the way their child turns out in adulthood, most especially in their relationships, as well as in what they, themselves have to say about their childhood experience. So, I will simply have to let him fully grow up and give you his report.
Relationships are not easy. You don’t need me to tell you that. But we are here to master them. And it is in the mastery of them that we will create a world that is actually conducive to wellbeing. And it is a pleasure to help you with this mastery.
So much of our effort in our social life is spent trying to get people to change. It’s the reason we spend hours talking and reasoning and arguing and fighting. It’s the reason we manipulate. It’s the reason we bargain. It’s the reason we beg. It’s the reason we shame them. It’s the reason we shower them with information. It’s the reason we give incentives. It’s the reason we impose consequences. Despite all of this effort, we often find ourselves powerless to getting them to change. Why is this? Because a person will not change unless they want to. And this, is one of the hardest things to accept. In today’s video, this is what we will be unpacking.
First thing’s first, in today’s modern world, it is considered both moral and evolved to let people be exactly as they are and accept them exactly as they are. To just realize that people will change whenever they are ready. And to stop trying to change them and instead, just change yourself. It’s got a live and let live vibe to it. It’s got to be said that this mentality and this advice is both poor and profoundly privileged. This is a mentality that unravels the minute that someone goes against someone else’s best interests badly enough. It is dependent on being able to not be affected by other people, which is not the reality of the world that we live in. Basically, things have to be going pretty good for you to think that this actually works. For example, let’s say that you have a person in your life who is locked into a rescuer pattern in relationships. They keep finding partners who are dysfunctional and who use them because it is their way to externalize the rescue that they, themselves want and it is their way to try to guarantee that someone will stay with them. Someone could reasonably tell you “Look… You’re never going to change them. Let them be exactly as they are and accept them as they are. They will only change this when they are ready.” And this advice might actually work out because letting the person just be how they are, has a relatively minimal effect on you personally. But what if you find out that a person is sexually abusing children? Does it work if I come to you and say “Let people be exactly as they are and accept them exactly as they are. Just realize that people will change whenever they are ready. And to stop trying to change them and instead, just change yourself”?
Or what if a person takes over your government and decides that all people of your race or religion are not wanted in the country? “Let people be exactly as they are and accept them exactly as they are. Just realize that people will change whenever they are ready. And stop trying to change them and instead, just change yourself”? Does it work now?
Even if we scale this down a tiny bit and look at a woman who is with a husband who is completely unavailable emotionally. Accepting that he is emotionally unavailable and that you can do nothing to change that, means swallowing that you will be emotionally starved in this relationship for the rest of your life. It means facing starvation or divorce and what if she has children? What will it do to them? It means facing bad financial realities, what is she going to do with limited capacity to earn and childcare on top of that? Let’s go up to her and say “your problem is that you’ve got to let people be exactly as they are and accept them exactly as they are. Just realize that people will change whenever they are ready. And stop trying to change him and instead, just change yourself”? Does that sound good now? You know that the answer is no. It doesn’t matter if the reality is that we cannot control a situation by getting the other person to change, we live in a world where we can and do seriously affect each other. The live and let live philosophy falls apart when the reality is that we live in an interdependent web in an approximately closed system called Earth. The idea that you can just “do your own thing” and other people can just “do their own thing” is just completely out of reality.
Why is this important to see? Because most people who are desperately trying to get someone to change, are doing so because there are actually serious implications for them if someone doesn’t change. Fear and pain and consequences that they are desperate to not experience. And when we come at them like they just need to get more accepting and allowing of others, rather than trying to change them, we are only proving that we don’t see the serious implications they are facing in the event that the person they are trying to change doesn’t choose to change. And this is the real reason why it is so hard to accept that people won’t change unless they want to.
It is with this awareness of the very real implications that we must accept that no person changes unless they want to. That you can’t make someone change. You can inspire them to change. You an influence them to change. You can threaten them or impose consequences on them, which puts pressure on them to change. You can educate them towards change. You can support them in them making a change. But you can’t change them. And a person only changes if they want to. So, a truth you need to swallow is that all you can do is to try to get a person to want to change.
Desire is a far more powerful force in this world than most people have any respect for. A person has to have a realization that they need to change because changing is in their own best interests. And this realization is the foundation of the desire to change. There are all kinds of reasons why a person doesn’t change. If you’d like to become aware of the main reasons, I highly suggest that you watch my video titled: The Real Reason Why People Don’t Change. When we accept that no person changes unless they want to, it brings us face to face with what our powerlessness actually is. We don’t know how to get them to want to. Perhaps instead, we will find ourselves up against the reality of the incentive(s) they have to make no change.
But why is it so important to accept that a person won’t change unless they want to?
If someone isn’t putting energy and effort into making a change, we can see what the real issue is. The real issue is, they don’t want to change.
We can focus on the real task at hand… trying to spark their own desire to change. This implies showing someone why it is in their best interests to make the change. This also implies troubleshooting the incentives they have to not change.
Sometimes when we accept that someone will not change, because they don’t want to, we stop wasting our time and energy trying to get something that is unworkable to be workable. We start to accept that all of our effort to try to change them is an attempt to avoid the reality that we are actually in, the one we couldn’t actually avoid. We suddenly see the choice we are actually up against. It forces us to look at the window that is closed and look for the window that is open. We can then see where we need to put our attention, time, energy and resources instead. You can think of this like stopping the pattern of being the moth that is flying up against a window until it dies of exhaustion. As the saying goes, don’t keep beating on the wall hoping it will turn into a door. And yes, sometimes accepting that a person will not change because they don’t want to and we cannot get them to want to, puts us in the position to have to make terrible choices. Terrifying choices with very real implications.
For a person to change and for that change to last, they must feel that the change is theirs. They must own it. They must choose it. They must feel It was a change that they realized was in their best interests to make and therefore it was a change that they wanted. The faster you accept this, the more effective you will be at inspiring others to want to change and the more effective you will be at closing the gap between where you currently are and what you want.
It isn’t very popular to talk about why people cheat. Suggesting that a person has a reason to do it, makes people feel like the blame is shifting from the person who cheated, to the person who was cheated on. Never the less, for the sake of conscious awareness, it is important to accept that people do have reasons for doing the things that they do. And this includes cheating. While there are a variety of reasons why a person might cheat on their partner, there is one glaring primary reason that men cheat. And there is one glaring primary reason why women cheat. And the reason isn’t the same.
The main reason that men cheat is: Insecurity. It happens when a man is experiencing low self-esteem and a diminished sense of self-worth, especially within the context of his current relationship. Men use cheating as a way to seek validation of their worth and in order to feel more needed, valuable and desirable. When a man feels inadequate or fears he's not living up to his partner's expectations, cheating can be a way he experiences someone appreciating and admiring him.
Men are particularly sensitive to being pushed away. When a person is pushed away, they usually take it personally. And when a person takes being pushed away personally, they feel bad about themselves. They feel inadequate and therefore uncertain about everything. For example, uncertain about their own abilities and competence, uncertain about their capacity to handle situations, uncertain about their own value, uncertain about their relationships and therefore totally insecure in those relationships, uncertain about their future etc. They feel out of control. Their confidence goes away. They feel diminished. This is a horrible experience for anyone. For the masculine, it is a true hell on earth. It disconnects them from a sense of their own power. So, a man may seek out another person (such as another woman) as a way of gaining control of this insecurity spiral. With the other person, they experience the validation that they have value. That they are desirable, attractive, adequate, capable, competent, admired, wanted and needed. All of this increases their confidence and sense of power. Men who cheat as a tonic for their insecurity will choose to cheat with other people (like other women) who best provide this emotional experience for them. A person who pulls them in and makes them feel good about themselves.
When you hear this about men, it is tempting to feel like you have to tip toe around his ego or else you will be cheated on. That is not the takeaway. A man can take negative feedback, provided that he also feels the opposite of that negative feedback in the relationship. Essentially that you pull him in, value him, want him, need him and appreciate him.
What people (especially women) really need to accept about men is that men need to feel needed, wanted and valued for who they are and what they do. They need to have a place in your life and to derive a sense of self-esteem from being in that place. Something that leads to that sense of self-esteem is to actually be esteemed by you for being in that place in your life. When you are in a relationship with a man, you have got to make space in your life for him to have a place in your life. He needs to be pulled in by you. He needs to feel as if you need him, want him and value him. This makes a man feel connected and committed to you. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: What Every Woman Should Know About Men.
Some examples of things that are antidotes to insecurity for a man are: Giving him direct positive feedback, fully taking in and receiving his physical affection, fully taking in and receiving what he gives to you or does for you, showing with your reactions to him and body language that what he is doing has a positive effect on you, flirting with him, accepting his help, reflecting to him what his role in your life is and how much you value what he does for you in this role, complimenting him in front of others, asking for his opinion, listening to his feelings and thoughts with the attitude that you see them as important, encouraging his being in power rather than turning against it, giving him admiration for his masculine traits, trusting him in his methods or ways (if he is trustworthy), acknowledging and drawing attention to his areas of competence, respecting his time, telling him where you are confident in him etc.
As a man, when you are feeling the impulse to cheat based on feeling insecurity, stop and realize that what you are going for is self-esteem via the other person. Think about the fact that even though cheating with someone may give you some of those feelings you are needing, they come at the price of self-esteem as well. Can you truly feel good about yourself if you betray someone and by doing so, lose trust and respect in yourself and see yourself as bad and wrong and hurtful and immoral? Because if you have agreed to a monogamous relationship and you cheat, this is how you are going to feel about yourself. The alternative is to work directly on your insecurities and self-esteem so that you become confident and have a higher self-esteem. The alternative is also to directly address the issues in your relationship, including the fact that in the relationship, you feel so unloved and/or rejected, and/or undervalued, and/or unwanted, and/or not respected and/or emasculated by her and/or potentially even worthless in her eyes. What you are looking for is to co-create a relationship where you feel esteemed in the relationship. Some of this involves you doing what would get you that esteem from your partner (earning their high regard). And some of this involves them actively and consciously speaking and acting in ways that show you that they do hold you in high esteem. That they do want and need and value you.
If fidelity is something you want, one way to be empowered about it (rather than just leaving it up to the other person to be faithful no matter what) is making sure the man in your life knows and feels that you need, want and value him. For this reason, a powerful question to ask yourself is: How could I show him that he is needed by me, wanted by me and that he is valued by me? And act on the answer you receive.
Security is the primary concern in a relationship. In this context, let’s define relationship security as feeling safe, certain and confident about each other and about the bond between you. Having this security brings about a natural state of ease, relaxation and wellbeing. If you look out at the world, you will notice that each and every society has concrete ideas about what creates security in a relationship and what destroys it. So, what you get in any society is a one size fits all mentality and model of relationship security. The thing is, relationships don’t fit inside a box like this any more than individual people do. Relationship security is something that can and should be customized to the specific people in that relationship. Being conscious and intentional enough to customize relationship security in this way, makes all the difference in your relationships and at the same time, it has the potential to break society free from its tendency towards rigidity. Let’s unpack the concept of customizing relationship security so that you can start customizing it in your relationships.
Contrary to what many people think, relationship security is not something that is just there (and should just be there) the minute you commit to having a relationship. It also isn’t something that you build, and then it is just there. Relationship security is something that you are consistently doing and consistently building and re-establishing every day in your relationship over the duration of the entire relationship. Every interaction, every conversation, every situation and each little moment that you experience with the other person is an opportunity to either establish and build security or destroy security. Metaphorically speaking, to put money in the security bank. Or take money out of it. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: The Biggest Mistake People Make About Relationship Security.
When something that a person in a relationship does or does not do, creates a fear, poses a threat, invites the unwanted or creates danger for the other person (or for the relationship itself) on a physical, emotional or mental level, some degree of security is lost in the relationship. And guess what, it doesn’t matter whether that threat or danger is or is not real. The reality is that you lose security in a relationship according to each person’s unique, individual perception.
This awareness of how much relationship security is down to individual perception does not let you off the hook. A lot of people love to do seriously objectively destructive things in a relationship and put the blame of insecurity on the other person’s “perception” of insecurity. At the same time, we must also be aware that there are all kinds of factors that influence a person’s perception of relationship security or lack thereof. Things like personal experiences and beliefs and societal indoctrination.
But let’s talk about the relationship security box. This rigid ideology that many people have relative to relationships. When people are operating within a one - size fits all relationship box, they will see certain things as a given. Such as: It is a given that if a man is in a relationship and he looks at other women, he is making his relationship insecure. Or, if a woman is monitoring her friend’s whereabouts with a tracker, she is making her friendship insecure. Or if a woman gives her husband negative feedback, she is making her marriage insecure. Or if a person engages in a sexual relationship with more than one person, they are destroying their relationship.
It is entirely possible that a man may be in a relationship with a woman who likes pointing out and looking at other beautiful women and sharing in that zesty appreciation together. She may not mind him looking at other women and may only feel insecurity set in if he wants to act on his physical attraction to another woman. It is entirely possible that a woman may have a friend who was so neglected as a child that for this friend to know that she knows her whereabouts at all times and that she is being tracked, may make the friend feel even more secure in the relationship. Even more protected and valued. It is entirely possible that a man may appreciate negative feedback in a relationship because he is deeply personally committed to personal growth and hates guessing where a woman is relative to him and hates guessing how she feels. He feels more secure when a woman is “putting it to him” in an honest and raw way. It is entirely possible that a couple may actually have a sexuality that revolves around engaging in sex with different partners. And doing so, enhances the relationship and cements their compatibility.
In certain parts of the globe, being in love with someone is seen as being an oppositional force to security in a marriage. In other places, if a woman does not wear a covering over her hair, she is foregoing both protection and modesty and her level of faithfulness in a relationship is to be doubted. All things which can cause a man to feel that they have no shared future together. In other places, the practice of “wife sharing” (which is where a man invites another man into his bed to sleep with his wife) is thought to deepen friendship between the men and prevent promiscuity and jealousy in both sexes. In certain parts of the globe, blunt insult honesty is seen to strengthen relationships. In other parts of the globe, lying to someone in order to be polite is seen to strengthen relationships. In some parts of the globe, couples feel secure when they spend the majority of every day away from each other and only spend quality time together when it is intentional, such as going on dates. In other parts of the globe, you get into a relationship to spend your life together, so leading separate lives like this, defeats the point of being in a partnership. For one person, sleeping in a separate bed from their partner may create insecurity. For another, it may not. For one person, wearing wedding rings may be essential for security. For another, it may not really matter. You get the point.
What is important is to throw out the rigid model of relationship security. Start questioning your pre-conceived ideas about relationship security. And custom design relationship security in your relationships in a way that suits you and the other person in that relationship. This is yet another reason why compatibility is so crucial in a relationship. When incompatibility exists, it is a real problem for security in a relationship. I’ll give you one simple example to illustrate this. Imagine that you wanted a feeling of exclusivity in a romantic relationship and you want a physically faithful partner. For you, your partner being flirty and physically affectionate with other people makes you feel threatened and alone. It is the opposite of what you want. Getting into a relationship with an exotic dancer, would be incompatible. There would be daily withdrawals from the relationship security bank account. Or for example, if relationship security includes your partner maintaining your privacy, being with a person whose relationship security is about openness, is going to be a real problem. If you get into a relationship with someone incompatible, the amount of effort you will have to put towards trying to create security in the relationship will be like trying to build a sand castle in the rising tide. It will quite literally be impossible to keep up. If you want to understand more about this, you can watch my video titled: Incompatibility, a Harsh Reality in Relationships.
To give you an example of a couple that has custom designed their unique formula for relationship security, let’s look at Trevor and Milly. In this relationship, Trevor is the one that earns the money in the relationship. He fully provides for Milly. Trevor likes feeling fully in the masculine in terms of providorship. It causes his confidence to increase and his sense of having a place in her life to be more solid. And without this pressure, Milly is more affectionate and loving towards him. She also respects him more and he meets her lifestyle needs, which causes her to value him more. This decision enhances their sense of relationship security. Milly and Trevor have their own bedroom. They only share a room when they have sex. Both of them feel that having this autonomy causes their attraction to each other to be more intense as well as causes them both to feel like they don’t have to tip toe around each other or conform to each other’s incompatible rhythms. Trevor likes to work sometimes until 3:oo am. Milly likes to sleep at 9:00pm and wake early. And they have totally different styles. Her room is floral. His is leather and chrome. This too, enhances their feeling of security in the relationship.
Milly used to involve her mother in every single thing, five or more times a day. This was not enhancing the relationship security because Trevor felt he was married to and had to please two women, not just one. Milly decided to enhance their relationship security by not requiring Trevor to cater to her mother, except for on her mother’s birthday and Christmas. This agreement didn’t feel like a sacrifice for either, so it enhanced their sense of security. Trevor met Milly at a kink festival. Milly is a submissive and Trevor is a dom. They attend play parties together where Trevor intentionally watches other men sexually engage with Milly. Both of them describe this being an experience that makes them feel more bonded and more attracted to each other. Something that would destroy other couple’s sense of security, actually enhances theirs. Milly wears a submissive’s necklace. Wearing this necklace makes both of them feel more secure in their bond. Milly is insecure about being lovable and needs lots of reassurance. So, Trevor makes it a point to consistently reassure her and shower her with words of affirmation throughout the day. This has a real effect, so it enhances their security. Trevor does not do well with criticism. It was an issue in their relationship at first. But Milly needs to be able to voice her distress so that Trevor can make adjustments. So, they have come up with a solution. When Milly needs to give Trevor negative feedback, she writes him a text message rather than confronting him about it verbally. He gets to process it and deal with any shame that arises away from her. And then, come to her with constructive solutions to the distress she is expressing. This way of dealing with conflict between them, enhances the security in their relationship. They both love basketball. So, they make it a point to go to every basketball game of the NBA season. Sharing this obsession makes them feel bonded. It enhances the security in their relationship.
But now, let’s look at Benham and Raahini. They both have careers that they adore. They have decided that putting all of their money into a joint account and building it up to invest in things together creates a sense of togetherness in wealth building, which creates security in their relationship. Both of them believe that fidelity is critical to their security in their relationship. And so, the rule they have come up with is that neither of them does anything to arouse insecurity in each other with a person of the opposite sex. For them, this means no flirting, no touching, no kissing, no sex outside the relationship. They expect each other to end relationships where this is even a remote threat. Benham needs Raahini to put lots of energy into his family of origin. She is ok with this because it is a cultural expectation that she can sign up for, especially because it creates a sense of belonging for her and means so much to Benham that it does strengthen his commitment to her. Raahini needs to be allowed to go out once a week with her female friends. For her, this fuels her and makes her feel freer. Benham used to be threatened by this. But he said that what would make him feel more secure is getting to know the other women. Raahini obliged him and slowly, he got to know them and now, he likes to enable them to have a good time. Last time Raahini had a girl’s night out, he found out where they had gone to dinner and bribed the bar tender to bring them drinks on the house. This enhanced Raahini’s bond to him. She found it extra thoughtful. But they both agree that every other day of the week, they need to spend the evening together, otherwise they would start to feel disconnected and their sense of security would suffer. Raahini and Benham like to argue. They were both never allowed to argue with their parents as kids and so it feels freeing that they can yell and argue with each other. It enhances their feelings of intimacy and acceptance. In this way, what may destroy another couple’s security, actually enhances theirs. They sleep in the same bed every night. For them, cuddling is a bonding experience and sleeping separately is emotionally threatening to security. One way they show their love to each other is by enabling each other’s need for novelty. They both have a bucket list of things they want to try. They make it a point to help each other to experience those things on each other’s list. Raahini is a excellent cook. When she cooks for Benham, especially when she sends him to work with a lunch, it makes them feel more secure in the relationship. He feels nourished and loved by her and she feels received and appreciated. They are religious about wearing their wedding rings 24-7 and are very superstitious about other couples taking them off or losing their rings. This is a big point of security in the relationship.
You may have cringed listening to these examples because contrary to Trevor and Milly or Benham and Raahini, certain elements of that relationship may make you die of insecurity. That is how to know that those specific elements may not be a picture of your personal relationship security formula. What is important to know, is that it is not a given that X creates insecurity in a relationship and X creates security. It really depends on each individual. It isn’t wrong for a person or for two people to decide to stretch themselves regarding security in a relatioship. This can be a key component to growth. But what matters is that if you do this, both people actually (not codependently) want to do this. If not, it will backfire. One common example of this is, if a couple wants to open the relationship. Relationship security depends on trouble shooting the insecurities that exist in a relationship and custom designing your relationship together in order to create real security. Security that can be depended on.
Never underestimate the power of self-questioning. It leads to so much self-awareness and personal growth and positive life change. While there are no bad questions to ask yourself, every question leads you closer and closer to your personal truth, not all questions are created equal. There are definitely some stand out questions. And today, I’m going to give you one of the best questions you can ever ask yourself, as well as explain to you why it is such an important question.
I’m going to start out by simply giving you the question. Here it is: What Do I Want To Spend The Rest Of My Life Thinking About?
Almost everyone who is looking for life fulfillment, is looking to figure out what they want to spend their life doing. This is why the most common questions you will hear is: What do you want to do with your life? Doing is about action. Action, what we do, actually accounts for far less of our life experience than thought does. What our minds are preoccupied with creates much more of our experiential reality. And, as we all know, we can be doing one thing and thinking about something else entirely. When we think, we are lending our energy to what we are thinking about. And it is pure logic that to live a fulfilling life experience, we want to be intentional about what we are lending our energy to.
This question forces you to admit to yourself about what you love thinking about. What you WANT to lend your energy to. This reveals your true interests and true values. Not only this, it reveals what makes you feel alive and energized to think about. This will lead to a more meaningful life. One where you are engaged with what you are passionate about.
By asking yourself this question, you begin to zero in on what you want to be engaged with on a mental level in this life, which is in alignment with your purpose for being in this life. This question can act like a compass pointing you towards all kinds of elements of your life purpose. What you want to spend your life thinking about often guides what decisions are right for you to make, what actions to take and therefore what you want to be doing in this life too.
This question has the capacity to reveal what we actually spend our life thinking about vs. what we would want to be dedicating our energy to thinking about. This is important because it can help us to be intentional with our thoughts. Intentional in that if we notice that we are off track and out of alignment by dedicating lots of our time to thinking about things we don’t want to be thinking about, we can stop it and re-direct our energy and focus to what we do want to be thinking about instead. Your current focus and what you currently lend your energy to mentally, may just be totally out of alignment with your interest, passions and desires.
I don’t want you to copy anyone on this list of examples that I give you, because your answer to this question must be deeply and uniquely and truthfully yours in order to work. But, just to give you some examples of answers other people have given me, here are some:
*The existence of dark matter and dark energy in the universe
*Home décor and within this, color theory
*The full picture of human health. Mental health, physical health, nutrition, emotional health, personal needs.
*Vintage cars and especially how to improve their engines, while keeping the external kit the same.
*Endometriosis
*Woodworking, everything and anything related to it. And my favorite is focusing on exotic woods.
*Problem solving for businesses in trouble, I want to be able to solve the biggest business problems, ones that make everyone else stuck
*Learning different skills, whichever one peaks my interest at a given time
*Reality. I am obsessed with finding the truth in every situation. I want to become aware of and show people the truths that they don’t see
*Making art out of food with only what is available to me in my own garden and therefore according to season
*Personal financial success. Strategies for accruing the most wealth possible.
*Equine therapy for special needs people
Wastewater technologies across time both past and future and the invention of better technologies and methods.
*The prevention of cyber crime
*Genealogy. I adore finding people information about their ancestors
*Biodynamic farming and how to get existing farmers to adopt biodynamic farming practices
*Relationships between men and women
*The Philosophy of ethics, especially normative ethics
*My kids. How to parent them in order to best set them up for a happy and successful life
*Human sexuality, especially polyamory and most especially how to make polyamory actually work in a healthy way
*The intricacies of the tax system
*Beauty and cosmetics. I love obsessing over making people look their best and feel good about themselves.
Ok, when you answer this question, be open to the fact that it may change over time. We may have experiences in life which ignite new interests and obsessions. If this were not the case, we would have the same answer today as when we were four years old. For some of us, our interests are the same over time and for others, it changes. The point is, we want to identify what really lights us up to think about. If you want a list of other questions to think about, you can watch my video titled: The Most Powerful Questions You Can Ask Yourself.
So here it is again, it’s your turn to find your answer… What Do I Want To Spend The Rest Of My Life Thinking About?
A question that I keep being asked when I am talking to people on stage around the world is: What should I do about my disorganized attachment? What people are calling “Disorganized Attachment” is one of the most tormenting and painful things that a human being can experience. And very few experts actually understand it. So, let’s look at disorganized attachment from a different perspective and also explain what you can do about it.
First let me explain very briefly what disorganized attachment is. Attachment theory was pioneered by John Bowlby. He sought to understand the emotional bonds between people, most especially between parent and child, which sets the foundation for all subsequent relationships. In this research, he recognized the difference between secure and insecure bonds, basically secure vs. insecure attachments. He identified and was focused on three main styles of attachment. Secure, anxious-ambivalent and avoidant. To give you a fly-by of these types of attachments, someone with secure attachment feels secure in their relationship with other people and due to this, they aren’t clinging desperately to the other person for fear of abandonment, nor are they pushing the other person away to avoid pains that may come with closeness or the attempt to get closeness, such as enmeshment or consistent dismissal or rejection etc. Because of this, they observed that a person with secure attachment appears to be happy with both intimacy and autonomy. Someone with anxious-ambivalent attachment does not feel secure in their relationships with other people. Specifically, they have learned the other person will “go away” from them in any number of ways. Remember that you can abandon people in way more ways that just physically. And so, they fear abandonment and as a result, cling to the other person for dear life and experience autonomy as aloneness. They need constant reassurance of the security in the relationship. Someone with avoidant attachment also does not feel secure in their relationship with other people. Specifically, they have learned that closeness brings about pain, such as enmeshment with a parent or consistent disappointment or consistently being dismissed or the experience of emotional unavailability or rejection. And so, they tend to keep people emotionally at an arm’s length or push people away, be uncomfortable with intimacy and avoid close relationships.
In the 1980s, a woman named Mary Main and her colleagues came in on the foundations that Bowlby laid and identified a fourth style of attachment. They called this disorganized attachment. With disorganized attachment, it was observed that a person displays a mix of both of the insecure attachment styles, anxious and avoidant. So, let’s dive into what disorganized attachment actually is.
If a caregiver is attuned to a child, is sensitive and responsive to their feelings, is responsive to their needs and behaves in a way that is in-alignment with the best interests of the child, the child learns they can trust and rely on this person. Their caregiver starts to equal safety. A secure attachment is formed. If this does not happen, and a child learns that he or she cannot trust and rely on their caregiver. The caregiver does not equal safety. An insecure attachment is formed.
At its core, disorganized attachment is a split relative to the bond you have with other people. A split between the aspect of you that is terrified of loss of connection, including abandonment and that desperately wants to feel securely bonded. And on the other hand, the aspect of you that has learned other people are dangerous and you must protect yourself from them. The core experience that creates this split is really about one thing: Being hurt by and therefore terrified of the very person that you are bonded to. It happens as a result of adverse childhood experiences with the person a child should be able to trust. Bonds are how people feel safe. This is true of adults, and especially true of children. So, a disorganized attachment happens when a child’s only source of safety – their parent/caregiver is also a source of danger, pain and/or fear.
A person learns from their caregivers, such as parents, whether people in general are safe or not. They learn what to expect in their relationships with other people what they experienced with their parents. So, these early relational experiences lay the foundation for all future relationships. It isn’t like a person who develops disorganized attachment with their parents simply gets into a relationship with someone as an adult and is secure in that relationship. Rather, their relationships tend to be a confusing, contradictory mess of unpredictable and brief moments of the feeling of security dispersed in a chaotic, unpredictable hell of swinging between a) closeness and clinging in desperation for security and safety. And b) feeling like the very person you are bonded to and were just a minute ago either secure with or desperate for closeness with is dangerous in some way now and so, you are willing to chew your own arm off to self-preserve.
So, what should you do if this is you? Recognize that the trauma you experienced caused a split in your consciousness. Trauma fragments us. We end up developing an aspect of ourself that can protect us and an aspect of us that is in need of that protection. In the case of disorganized attachment, the unsafety you experienced left you with two contradictory impulses and even two contradictory safety strategies. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: Fragmentation, The Worldwide Disease. You need to start to relate to what is happening with you through the lens of it being a split. If you know you have a split, then you know that depending on what is happening in any given moment, things like how the other person is behaving, what they are saying or what thoughts you may be thinking in response to something you heard or saw or started worrying about, these splits will become more or less activated.
To give you an example, maybe you and your partner had a really, long, bonding talk. You may experience a matter of hours where you feel secure. The aspect of you that protects you from the danger of other people and gets you away from them (what many call your avoidant split) is totally inactive. The aspect of you that clings desperately for fear of loss of that bond and the loss of the safety of them is also not very active. The fact that you feel good in the relationship may activate a tiny bit when you think the occasional worrying thought in those hours about them dying or something. But neither is “up”. However, uh-oh, the next morning you found out that your partner broke their word with you. You can’t trust that. Your avoidant aspect gets totally triggered. You know what happened when people broke their word with you before. This demonstrates that they don’t care about your best interests. Your insecure aspect also gets activated because this part of you knows that this is gonna be a conflict and that if there may not be resolve, you can’t face being alone and losing your partner. You argue with your partner, in this conversation the things they are saying and their body language indicate that they don’t even see they hurt you. Oh no. They are even more dangerous. Avoidant is even more activated. It continues. At one point they say something so painful that you are so escalated that your avoidant split has either decided to get in a car and get you as far away from your partner as possible or to say something to destroy their self-esteem entirely. You are willing to destroy the relationship. Its weird, you actually feel like you’d be totally fine without them. But when you leave, or say the thing you were gonna say, you feel the loss of them. You panic. Abandonment terror triggered. Now the situation flips and your anxious attachment aspect is level twelve activated. You’re desperate to get closeness with them again. You suddenly do and say things that cause your partner to come around and hold you. This causes a flare in your avoidant aspect. What if this means they don’t take me seriously and break their word again? Relative to your partner, it feels like you are thirsty for poisoned water emotionally. It is VERY hard for you to feel emotionally stable because of this obviously. Many people would say you can’t “regulate yourself emotionally.” It may take days for you to stop this chaotic, violent, swinging between these parts of you. Things eventually get to a place where you are feeling secure again. For a bit. But then, you look at your partner, you think “oh my god, she’s so pretty or he’s so handsome”. And then have this fear that because of it, they may leave you. Bam, anxious split activated again. But then, two hours later, you feel like your partner is doing something that is overstimulating you. They don’t respond to this overstimulation by stopping what they are doing. This is unsafe. Your avoidant gets activated. It needs to get you away from them. So, you go upstairs and hide in your closet to get away. But in there, your anxious split realizes you really want them to come find you. You get the point. Now you get the chaos.
You can address this split within yourself in a very direct way by doing parts work. When you do this, you can choose to go into either 1) The part of me that is my avoidant in relationships. And 2) The part of me that is my anxious-ambivalent in relationships. OR 1) The part of me that is in charge of keeping me safe from the very people who I need for security and 2) The part of me that needs people for security and is terrified of them going away emotionally, mentally or physically. To learn how to do parts work, you can watch my video titled: Parts Work, What Is Parts Work and How To Do It. You can also seek out someone to facilitate this parts work with you. You can find a practitioner who specializes in parts work by going to www.CompletionProcess.com. There are also several other modalities that include parts work that you can look to for facilitation such as voice dialogue, internal family systems or gestalt therapy etc. The goal of doing this is to create integration and alignment between these parts of you, which are in a painful relationship with each other which doesn’t work. And a better strategy for safety in relationships with people.
When it applies to real time (one or both aspects of this split are activated) scenarios, the key is to consistently remember to observe yourself. Watch these reactions you are having, the thoughts you are thinking and what you are having the impulse to say and do. See them for what they are in the moment. For example, here I am, feeling like running away, burning hot with fear and fury, having this violent impulse to threaten to leave my partner. Here is my avoidant split. It is designed to protect me and then specify how it is trying to go about this ie: By taking me away from the other person, who I see as dangerous at this moment or by threatening this person so as to dominate them. And here I am, even in this argument, where I had the impulse to leave my partner two seconds ago, my partner mentioned having to go to the store and now I have a lump in my throat, my heart is racing, I feel so uneasy. I can’t stand the idea of them getting hit by a car or something. I’m thinking thoughts about the worst-case scenario. This is my anxious split. It is desperately clinging for fear of abandonment. It is trying to protect me from loss of the relationship. And then specify how it is doing this. “ie: thinking of the worst case scenario, so I can prevent it or agreeing to things that I know will please my partner, so the rupture can end.
Recognize that what you are feeling regardless of which split is active, is unsafety. And if the feeling of unsafety is too extreme (basically if you’re too dysregulated) the focus needs to be on calming down your nervous system. Use 2 different nasal breathing pattern exercises. You breathe both in and out your nose. You can pick whichever feels best to you at a given time. The first is the 4-6-8 breath. For this breathing pattern, you breathe in for the count of four seconds, hold your breath at the top of that inhale for six seconds, and breathe out for the count of eight seconds. And the second breathing pattern is the box breath. For this breathing pattern, you breathe in for the count of four seconds, hold at the top of the inhale for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds and hold again at the end of the exhale for four seconds. With these breathing patterns, do them for whatever duration feels comfortable and effective for you. You’re looking to do what causes a physiological de-escalation. It helps to close your eyes and just be still for a while. It may help to splash or submerge your face in cold water, or use a cold ice pack on the back of your neck and chest for a few minutes.
Then, watch what any part that is active is thinking and doing within you and from this objective perspective, lovingly respond to it. Think about doing this like helping a person that is triggered as hell. Perhaps like a loving parent or advocate or therapist might. The goal is to make this chaotic, subconscious and automatic process happening within you as conscious as possible. And with this, consciously decide upon what the actual (not knee-jerk) best thing is to say or do in the situation at hand to be in alignment with your values and with what you really want most.
If you are in a relationship, your actual need is to have the relationship become stronger, safer and more secure. If you love the other person, you want them to feel safe and good. One of the hardest things to do, is to remember this when you are triggered into feeling like the other person is so dangerous, they feel more like an enemy than someone that you love.
There is a common reason for this, which has to do with fragmentation. Let me explain why you can go from feeling in one minute like the person you are with is literally the safest, most amazing partner in the world one minute. And then the next, like they are the devil, sent to destroy you and you have no access to how you felt before. Just like when you are in lovey mode, you can access how you felt about them when they made you feel unsafe. The reason is that you can think of these splits within you like compartments. All kinds of things can be sorted into and stored in these compartments. Memories, feeling states, perspectives about people etc. And so, when one split is active, you may feel like you only have access to bad memories about your partner and the feeling of emotional neglect, anything that fits with the avoidant. Yet when the other is active, you may notice that you only have access to adoring thoughts about them and good memories and fuzzy feelings, anything that fits with the anxious-ambivalent. It is very consistent with what many psychologists call splitting. If both are active at the same time, it’s like a roller coaster from hell of being flooded with things from each compartment. This is why people with disorganized attachment display such a disorganized mix of contradictory feelings, thoughts and behaviors in their relationships.
But back to it, observing and becoming aware of what is happening when either split is activated, allows you to respond to what is going on within yourself, rather than be only in the subjective experience of and at the mercy of either part. It puts you in the position to choose what to do consciously. And remember that when it comes to these parts, it is all about safety. You want to feel safe and secure, especially in your relationship. So, are you genuinely unsafe? If so, how? To the contrary, how might you be safe? You need to question your perception of unsafety to figure out if the other person is genuinely a threat or not. You need to feel safety. What is the best, most direct way to actually achieve a feeling of safety in this situation, especially knowing that a move in one direction, is likely to trigger the other split into activation? Also, if you want safety and security in a relationship, it can’t only be up to the other person to become safe and give them security. You need to behave in a way that makes the other person safe and secure with you. So, consider whether you are behaving in a way that makes the other person safe or not. It takes some practice, but at first you will not even realize that one of these parts has activated and taken over, you’ll just be in it, doing what you always do when this happens. As you practice more, you will realize it when you have already been “in it” for a while and when you do, snap out of the automatic pilot of it. As you practice more, you will eventually notice the second the activation starts happening and not even be taken away by the thoughts and feelings or slip into the behaviors at all.
Here is an example of how this might look: Imagine that I am a woman my boyfriend left me to do everything for a potluck dinner and didn’t lift a finger. Say that I start noticing that I am getting this feeling in my body like I am ready to rip him to shreds. Maybe I see a violent image of doing something to him. I may realize “wait – I recognize this. Look… the reality is that he is my boyfriend. Am I actually seeing him as my partner right now… no, I feel like he is a monster. This means my avoidant split is activated.” So, I observe myself. I observe thoughts like: “Oh my god, this ass hole just walked into my life so he could make me responsible for him too, as if I don’t have enough pressure already.” And I watch my impulses to take a glass of water and go over to where he is on the couch and throw it in his face. And I watch how I feel like I am full of some kind of acid inside, which is making me writhe on an emotional level. I watch my mind kick up memories of other times that he has been passive and let me carry the weight of the responsibility. I keep getting more and more escalated against him and against the relationship. I am seeing that I am in a “mode”. So, I remember that what is actually happening is that I am feeling unsafe. Funny, I wouldn’t have even realized that this is the feeling of unsafety. Ok. I’m sitting on the couch. I’m putting an icepack on the back of my neck. I feel less intense. I’m starting an internal dialogue. I’m asking myself the question - What am I rally afraid of? Being leeched off of by a man. Ok. Is he leeching off of me, how is he leeching and how is he not leeching? Well… he pays the bills. He walks the dog. I just feel like he leaves me to initiate everything else or tell him to do it, or do it myself. I watch myself think the thought, “Another man wouldn’t do this to me.” Do I really want to just get rid of him because he has proven to act passive often, because I can do that… But is that what I really want? No. Ok… So, what do I want? I want him to do his part. Can I define what his part is? I want him to initiate carrying responsibilities. Not just give him assignments. Ok, I’m going to write him a letter specifically about this fear and why this is painful to me and about specifically what I need him to do. Or… I’m going to put it in his hands to figure out how he can keep me safe from feeling like I am carrying him and initiating everything. I think he also really needs to be reminded that my love language is acts of service. Then, I do this. I hand him the letter. Based on his reaction, the process continues. The process of consciously observing myself, having an internal dialogue with myself and consciously responding to what is happening, so I can feel safety/security and so that I am acting for the relationship, rather than against it. Keep in mind that this is a very simplified example of what to do. When unsafety aspects are activated, it will feel harder to do than this, ad that isn’t a “you problem”.
Keep in mind that people’s avoidants may show up in different, less escalated ways than this. It is simply a part of a person that keeps them safe from the very person that they are bonded to, in whatever way they perceive they are being made unsafe. So, imagine that a person goes into a self-esteem crisis, they may start to panic about losing their partner because they will be rejected. This anticipatory threat may make their avoidant part come up and suddenly they are emotionally distant and cold. Suddenly they are coming up with projects to do away from their partner. They may be totally emotionally suppressing, or they may feel tons of anxiety because their anxious part cannot deal with the very loss that the avoidant part of them is actively pre-emptively bringing about the loss of. What’s important to know, no matter how your avoidant part may manifest is that avoidant parts go against the relationship.
Because disorganized attachment is a safety specific issue, you might benefit by watching three of my videos: The first is, How to Feel Safer. The Second is: How To Create a Safe Relationship and the third is: Trust, What Is Trust and How To Build Trust In Relationships.
A disorganized attachment is the byproduct of relational trauma. And what is damaged in relationship must be healed in relationship. This means that what you need to experience is being able to be and feel safe in a relationship. Part of why it has felt so hard to solve your disorganized attachment is because healing it requires the other person/people to be willing and active participants in ensuring your wellbeing and safety. And you are in a world where most people have not learned how to do this. You live in the era of relationship idiocy. So, it’s a bit like the blind leading the blind. What you can work with, is people wanting to master relationship and being committed to this, like with actual effort. And in this, wanting to master mutual caring for the other’s wellbeing and safety. A big part about this is about strategizing safe, rather than unsafe ways to meet your relational needs within relationships. The bottom line is, you aren’t going to fix a disorganized attachment quickly. It is a rehabilitation process regarding safety in a relationship with another person, and eventually more than one person. And in this rehabilitation process, there will be parts you play and parts the other person must play and occasionally setbacks and repairs. The thing is, in this process, you are learning that you can be safe with others and that others care about your lived experience enough to adjust so that it can feel good for the first time in your life. You are co-creating an experience that you have no strong reference for yet. And there are many steps on that road. And you must keep in mind, there is a difference between a person who will not actually caretake your best interests because they are dedicated to their own best interests and are willing to harm you to do so. And someone who really does want to caretake your best interests and isn’t ok with screwing your best interests for their own, but who doesn’t perfectly understand yet how to do that dance. You need people in your life who demonstrate consistent effort to build and keep your trust. People who demonstrate a desire for you to feel good and safe and who therefore put effort towards finding win-wins. People who take feedback about your experience seriously and who are responsive to you. People who put effort towards making the relationship feel secure. It takes two to build safety in a relationship.
The process of healing disorganized attachment, especially in a world where people do not excel at making each other safe, is not easy. But, contrary to how it feels, it can be done. I’ve seen it done. And the more conscious you are of what is actually occurring with it, the smoother that process will be.
Shadow work is a term used often in spiritual and psychology circles to describe any process (of which there are thousands) that makes the subconscious conscious. The tool of shadow work is one of the most powerful tools in existence. But with any tool, it is important how you use it. And even more important than that is what you use it for. It is very easy to use shadow work as a tool to resist yourself and try to escape away from yourself. And nowhere is this truer than it is with regards to your pain. When this is the case, your pain will get worse. Let’s take a look at one of the most common pitfalls of shadow work, so that you don’t find yourself falling into it and so that you can get yourself out of it.
Years ago, the revolutionary psychologist Carl Jung (while studying with Freud), observed the fact that there were parts of his patients that they, themselves were aware of and to the contrary, there were parts that they, themselves were unaware of. Consciousness has long been referred to as a light. To become conscious of something is to be able to see it in the same way that we see something that is exposed to light. When something is unconscious, we cannot see it. It is as if we are trying to see it in the dark. And so, Carl Jung began to refer to the unconscious aspects within a person that they, themselves are unaware of or could not see as their ‘shadow’. The human shadow is any aspect of a person that is not exposed to the light of consciousness.
Every human in existence that was ever socialized (which is everyone), went through this process of splitting themselves into parts. Parts that are owned and parts that are disowned. This self-rejection is the birth of self-hate. The emptiness that we feel is the result of those missing rejected or disowned parts of our self. And the soul wants one thing, to make us whole again. We will be provided every single opportunity to become whole again and to make the subconscious conscious. But in order to become whole again, we need to see and accept the aspects of ourselves that we disowned and denied and rejected. This is what shadow work is all about.
How does all this relate to pain? Well, shadow work is excellent at reducing and even eliminating pain. Most people who start doing shadow work, start doing it so that they can stop being in pain. In order to make things better or solve a problem, you have to know what is going on. A lot of what is causing a person pain, is not known to their conscious mind. It is “in the shadow” so to speak. There are many shadow work processes that help you to become conscious of the causation of the pain you are experiencing. And many that help you to directly resolve what is causing you pain. Pain alerts us to a great many things that we have disowned, denied and rejected within ourselves. It alerts us to subconscious processes that are taking place within us that are making our life painful.
When people hear about or experience the pain reducing promise of shadow work, they associate shadow work with an end to pain. And here in lies a pitfall. This pitfall resides between a distinction. The distinction between getting out of and away from pain so that the pain goes away vs. coming in and closer so as to lovingly take care of pain; and in doing so, the pain is eased. This may seem like splitting hairs until you see it played out in an example. So, i’m going to use a common one.
Imagine that you are a little kid and you are crying because you are in emotional pain. Now imagine that your parent really can’t handle the way that you being upset makes them feel. They want the pain they are feeling because of you to go away. And the only way to make that happen, is to make you stop crying. So, your parent comes over to you to “comfort you or fix your problem”. But it doesn’t work. Why doesn’t it work? Because if you could hear the truth of the matter, it would be “Hey kid, I’ve come over to be here with you now so that you stop crying and are no longer a problem for me.” In this scenario, your parent is in resistance to you and they want to get out and away from the you that is hurting.
Now imagine the same scenario. You are crying because you are in emotional pain. Now imagine that your parent empathetically feels pain when you are in pain. The care they have for your life experience and also for theirs, makes them want to be there with you if you are in pain. It makes them genuinely want to understand what is causing your pain, so that they can take genuine positive ownership over your wellbeing and by doing so, find a way to help you to feel better. In this scenario, your parent is coming in and closer, so as to lovingly take care of your pain. With these examples, you can clearly see that the energy and intention behind the action is everything.
When we are in pain, that pain we are feeling can be compared to a child within us that is crying out for our help. The fact that we feel the pain, means that we are hearing those cries. This aspect of us needs us to empathetically care and to want to come closer so as to understand it and learn from it and caretake it. But so many of us approach shadow work like the parent in our first example. We use it as a tool to try to get our pain to shut up and go away. In fact, we are desperate for it to shut up and go away. But this attitude we have towards our pain in and of itself, only adds fuel to the fire of our pain. And so, our pain only intensifies.
When we do shadow work to try to get out of and away from our pain, we are in resistance to ourselves. We are trying to escape from ourselves. This is a profoundly un-self-loving act. We need to do shadow work from a space of love. To love is to consciously choose to take something as a part of ourselves. It is a state of deep positive ownership and integration. We need to do shadow work so as to deeply feel, see, hear and understand our pain. And to use this understanding to inform our choices and actions so that we are caretaking our wellbeing in the ways that will ease that pain. The pain itself is not the problem. The pain is simply the alarm bell alerting us to something in need of our presence, our attention, our curiosity, our focus, our love and our assistance.
If we are using shadow work to get away from our pain so we don’t feel it anymore, this means we have a part of ourselves that is in resistance to coming closer to and caretaking our pain. I highly suggest that you do parts work with this aspect of yourself. After all, this part of you is in and of itself in pain and doing so would be the first step to coming closer to and caretaking your pain. It is the pain behind your resistance to your own pain. To learn how to do this, you can watch my video titled: Parts Work (What Is Parts Work and How To Do It).
Each one of us needs to take a good look at the way that we are using shadow work and what for, in order to make sure that we haven’t made pain the problem. And in order to make sure we are not using shadow work as a tool to get out of and away from our pain or to get it to shut up. Essentially, to make sure we are not using shadow work as a tool of self-resistance.
Welcome to the age of technology. The current era has been absolutely defined by the development and widespread use of digital technologies. Technology is now deeply integrated into nearly all aspects of human life. As a part of this, so much of human life is spent online. One part of our life experience is lived in the physical world, and another is lived online. Our online experience, is customized and personalized. We prefer it this way, just like we prefer for our life in the physical to be customized and personalized. But there is a massive downside to this. Online algorithms are putting people out of reality.
An online algorithm is a set of instructions that online platforms use to analyze users as well as their online activity, so as to understand their preferences and then use this information to do things like personalize content, suggest items and rank search results. An online algorithm works in terms of input, processing and output. The input is that it takes user data such as any personal info you enter when signing up to a site, your location, your search and browsing history, your online purchases, your likes, your gender, your age, your shares, your comments, timing and frequency of you being online, the watch time you spent on a video or post etc. The processing is that they use calculations and rules to analyze this data. And the output is that they produce a personalized experience for you based off of it.
To give you a few examples of this, say that you went onto Instagram and watched a video post on celiac disease and then liked the video. The algorithm will then start to show you more videos about celiac disease and more adds for gluten free products. Or say that you are traveling to Florida with your phone, due to GPS data and your location based online activity, suddenly all things Florida will appear at the top of search results on your search engines. And you will suddenly see things about Florida when you never really had Florida on your radar before. Or say that your online activity suggests that you have a certain opinion about a political issue. The comments you will see under videos will change to be those that align with your opinion.
Obviously, there are upsides to this. We do get introduced to cool products we would want that we would otherwise miss out on. If we love puppy videos, we see more puppy videos. Crap we don’t like and are not interested in, gets filtered out. We see what is more relevant and engaging, which saves us so much time and effort finding what we need. By analyzing our data to providing relevant information, it makes decision making easier for us. It helps us connect with like-minded people. If there are threats or problems in our area, we are informed about it, which keeps us safer. All of this increases our sense of satisfaction when we are online. And, at the very same time, there is a very significant problem that algorithms are creating.
Algorithms are creating bubble realities built for one. Algorithms act as a filter, a shaper and a personalizer. Everything that exists online (such as news and information, opinions, products, opportunities etc.) is being filtered, shaped and personalized through your own individual algorithm. Because this is the case, you are not seeing, hearing, feeling and coming to know reality. Instead, you are seeing, hearing, feeling and coming to know a reality that has been custom built for you. Most especially based on your own preferences and interests and opinions. There is nothing objective about it. And so, the algorithm that exists on the platforms through which you consume information, is in fact preventing true conscious awareness.
Algorithms and the way that each one of us responds to the content fed to us according to our algorithm, is creating a human society that is deeply out of reality. Algorithms have created a kind of self re-inforcing feedback loop. To give you an example of what I mean, say you post something online, and this gets lots of engagement online. The algorithm will promote it due to this high level of engagement. This leads to even more engagement. Which leads to even more promotion of it. More and more and more people will see this post. Or to give you another example, imagine that you are afraid of snakes and you come across a video about a viper that is responsible for killing the most people on earth. And you watch that full video from start to finish. This increases your fear of snakes. It also tells your algorithm that this is engaging for you. So, you see another video about how to protect yourself from snakes. And you watch this one from start to finish too. After all, you’re really afraid of snakes, so it’s great info for you. This causes your algorithm to show you even more dangerous snake related content. Pretty soon, you are more terrified than ever before about snakes and you are convinced the whole world is full of them. A self-reinforcing feedback loop is a cycle of escalation.
Algorithms also fuel cognitive biases. To try to make it simple with regards to this conversation, you may have a bias towards or against one thing or another. Such as one political party vs. another or one racial group vs, another. Your algorithm will reflect this prejudice rather than challenge it. Or, you may already hold a certain perspective. Your algorithm will show you things that will reinforce that perspective, as well as show you posts and comments from other people who also share that perspective, leading you to believe that everyone agrees with you. Algorithms create ideological segregation like you would not believe.
Algorithms also create conformity effects. People are a social species. They want to belong, fit in, not miss out and be at the top of the social hierarchy. As such, they tend to adopt perspectives, beliefs, behaviors, preferences and trends simply because other people are doing the same. They may even do this despite the opposition of their actual individual truths. Algorithms can boost this herd-like behavior to a whole new level because they take user data and engagement metrics to promote popular content and trends. Better hope these trends harm nothing and no one right?
Algorithms don’t only reflect our preferences, things that tend to make us feel good or better. They reflect what captures our attention and what applies to us. If we recently got a divorce and our algorithm brings up a video of a women who got a divorce too that is talking about how terrible men are and we click like, we will see more videos and posts like it. More and more negative posts about men. And as a result, we will feel worse and worse and worse about men. Our algorithm can get us into a total downward spiral and put us in a dystopian reality that is disconnected from the full truth of reality; every bit as much as it could be used to create an upward spiral and put us in a Pollyanna reality that is totally disconnected from the full truth of reality.
These algorithms are extremely dangerous when you pair them with the fact that social media, which is where most people on earth get their information now, is the wild west when it comes to fake videos and images, misleading or outright false information. The speed at which this dis-information spreads between individuals and is propagated in the mainstream media is mind blowing.
Algorithms are also extremely dangerous when you realize that they can be used to show you what the people with the power to show you things want to show you. Things they want you to become interested in, information they want you to see. As well as keep you from seeing the things they don’t want to show you. Information they don’t want you to see. Products they don’t want you to know about. They can be a tool used for the best interests of those looking to control you.
The reality is that each one of our algorithms is separating us from each other. It is creating little narcissistic bubbles for each one of us. It is putting us into parallel perceptual realities where there is a drastic difference between the reality that one person is perceiving vs. another one is perceiving. This is a direct affront to the mastery of relationship and integration. Rather, it is a recipe for separation, isolation, polarization and opposition. To learn more about parallel perceptual realities and about why they are so dangerous, you can watch my video titled: The Most Dangerous Parallel Reality. Having the world at the touch of your fingers is the promise that the online world offers us. The internet could very well be the solution to the geographical reality bubbles we lived our life in before the internet. But algorithms are contributing to this problem rather than acting as the remedy for the problem.
The idea of an online algorithm may not scare you until you really get that human beings make decisions and take actions based off of the information that we see. Our behavior is the byproduct of the reality we perceive. This means, our online algorithm and the bubble reality it creates, is severely influencing us every day. It is dictating how we think and what we do. It is so important for people to know that the information, the reality being presented to them online, is not a true reflection of objective reality thanks to algorithms.
Rather than believing in the perceptual reality that your own algorithm is creating for you, you need to keep reminding yourself that this perceptual reality that you are seeing online is merely a kind of reflection of you. It is an online picture of you that was painted by digital tech. And it was built to be your own personal echo chamber. We are in a day and age where we need to consciously reach for alternative points of view. We need to consciously open our minds. We need to consciously take a step back and think about information and content we are seeing. We need to consciously influence our own algorithms. We need to think about the WHY behind us seeing what we are seeing online and The WHY behind us not seeing what we are not seeing online.
Especially in the world we are currently living in, never forget that today, what you are seeing online is not a reflection of reality, it is a reflection of your algorithm.
When it comes to emotions, we do things like ignore, suppress, deny, blunt, reject, fix, turn against, try to control, minimize, distract ourselves from, disguise, dissociate from, numb out and violently act out emotions. As a result of this dysfunctional relationship we have with emotions, some of you are disconnected from your emotions to the degree that you may not really consciously feel your emotions anymore. This is a big problem. For so many reasons, it is critical to re-connect with your emotions and start to feel them again. In this article, I’m going to give you an exercise to do plus a few more tips, which will help you to do exactly this.
Emotions are reactions in and of themselves. They occur within you in response to many different stimuli, such as people, places, things, situations, circumstances, and energies that you are encountering in the external world as well as your own thoughts. Especially your own thoughts about those external stimuli. Remember that thoughts can be subconscious or conscious. When we encounter a stimulus, we experience a reaction to it in the form of a highly physiological response that we feel. Within this felt based response, is information. Emotions carry a lot of information about our environment and about ourselves. Most especially about our subjective experience of our environment and about our personal truths. Some people might refer to this as cognitive interpretation. For example, a person may be having a strong emotional reaction and contained within this emotional reaction might be the information “that makes me feel powerless to X bad thing happening and I need to feel like I have some hand in making sure it doesn’t happen.” This is why emotions can serve as a kind of internal guidance system and influence a person to take a certain action.
Sometimes it is helpful to think of emotion as a different language in which information is received and transmitted. When we have an emotional reaction, most of the time, this information within the emotion is totally subconscious. And we do not take the time to make it conscious. We don’t tune into this language that is occurring within us so as to consciously ascertain the information it contains. And because of this, we simply have a behavioral response to the emotion. This is what people are most familiar with… the behavioral expression of an emotion. One of the biggest false assumptions people make is that all people experience emotions the same way and with the same level of intensity. They don’t. For example, anger does not always feel the same in one person’s body as it does in another’s. Some people also feel emotions much, much more intensely and for longer.
Our emotions are an automatic response. And for very good reason. When we are out navigating the world and the people, places and things in it, we need to have reactions to things and make sense of things VERY quickly. The physiological arousal response element of emotions (which you feel) as well as the cognitive interpretation element of emotions (which you are only rarely consciously aware of) happens in such an immediate and intertwined way.
The thing is, if you struggle to be attuned with your emotions so as to really feel them, you need to re-attune to your emotions. A helpful exercise you can do for this is to do a three-week exercise. On week one, you are going to set a timer to go off at certain intervals, such as every hour or every three hours. When the timer goes off, you are going to turn all of your attention towards the way you feel emotionally in your body. Specifically, to the sensations that are occurring in your body. Emotions appear as sensations in the body. For example, Anger may show up as flushing in your face, muscle tension in certain areas of the body, increased heart rate, trembling, churning in the stomach, pulling in the brow etc. The way that different emotions show up as sensations in people’s bodies may vary. You are going to record the sensations that are occurring at that time. Keep in mind that numbness is in fact a sensation.
On week two, you are going to do the same thing. But this time, you are going to add the element of trying to identify the name of an emotion that corresponds to the sensations you are experiencing. For example, say you notice dizziness, buzzing, weakness, constriction in that you are unable to breathe deep, sinking and lots of frantic energy movement. You may realize that this fits with anxiety. So, you would write down: Anxiety. You may pick more than one emotion if more than one fits. If it helps you, you can print off an entire list of emotions to refer to, so you can pick from that list.
On week three, you are going to continue to do both things. But this time you are also looking to give your emotion context. What this means is that you are going to look back to see when the emotion started. What was happening, what situation caused it to arise and what thoughts you were thinking. You are identifying the “why” behind the emotions you are feeling. And you are going to write down your findings. For example, let’s say you identify different sensations you are feeling and decide it fits with anxiety. You think back and realize that you started to feel anxious when you realized that your girlfriend was speaking to an ex of hers. And that you had the thought of them flirting and potentially getting back together. And the fearful thought that you may lose her. This exercise will help you to connect with your feelings, actually feel them and learn about yourself at this emotional level and about how you are emotionally experiencing your life.
In addition to this exercise, here are some more things you can do to re-connect with so as to fully feel and understand your emotions.
The vast majority of the time, people stop feeling as the result of a protective adaptation. Essentially, at some point in their life, they decided on a conscious or even subconscious level that feeling their emotions in and of itself was harmful and would only lead to negative consequences. This means, it is highly likely that a part of you is protecting you FROM feeling things with every bit as much (if not more) fervor than you are trying to feel things. For this reason, one of the best things you can do is to work with this aspect of you directly. You can do this using parts work. To learn how to do this, you can watch my video that is titled: Parts Work (What Is Parts Work and How To Do It). Your goal here is to get this aspect of you on board with feeling emotions rather than continuing to resist feeling emotions.
Practice experiencing your emotions as a mindfulness journey meditation. This process will put you completely in touch with your emotions and help you to start feeling again. I call this process The Emotional Experiencing Process. You can learn how to do this by watching my video titled: How To Do The Emotional Experiencing Process.
Express your emotion. Sometimes getting the ball rolling by expressing emotion actually helps you to fully feel the reality of what is going on with you emotionally. You can do this by following the prompts that I have laid out in my video that is titled: How To Express Your Emotion.
Water is an incredible amplifier of emotion. When I am working with someone who struggles to feel emotion, I will often put them in water because of how effective this is. So, if you want to feel your emotions, consider taking a bath or getting in an ocean or a lake or a stream. Getting into a Luke warm shower is also effective. And if you can find no option to submerge yourself, putting your feet into water is your next best option.
Go out into nature. Nature grounds people into their bodies. The more embodied you are, the more you will reconnect with your senses. Remember that emotions are a sense. And because of this, nature will help you to feel what is going on in your body and being. This includes the way you feel emotionally.
Move your Body. Moving your body gets you into your body and also reverses the freeze state that often accompanies states of emotional disconnection. While any movement is a good idea, the best thing is to do movement where you are able to work up a sweat. On top of this, exercise combats stress chemicals and stress chemicals flooding your limbic system is one reason why some people experience emotional numbness.
Consciously seek out and experiment with things that evoke strong emotion. This could be looking at art that is evocative, watching social media clips that are emotional in nature, watching movies that are meant to evoke strong emotions, listening to music that evokes emotions, trying new hobbies that stimulate emotions etc. You can seek out things that evoke specific emotions as well as a part of this experiment. And as you engage with these things, do so with mindfulness. Being fully present to and mentally describe the emotional reactions that are taking place in your body and being.
Start to pay attention to your dreams. Every morning, record what you can remember of your dreams as well as how you felt in those dreams. The dream world holds all kinds of emotional content that we may not be experiencing in our conscious waking life. Basically, we experience what is actually going on with us emotionally in our dream time. So, becoming conscious and aware of what we are experiencing in dream time, puts us in touch with what is happening with us emotionally in our day to day waking life.
Even though it is usually a protective adaptation, being disconnected from your emotions, to the degree that you are not consciously feeling your emotions, can be a very scary experience. It can make you feel like you are not really alive even though you are technically living. It can ruin your relationships with other people. And it can make it so you have lost your inner compass with which to navigate your life. These exercises will help you out of this quandary. And as a result, you will be able to feel once again.
We are at one of those scary points in the timeline of human history where the future is not certain for people. Occasionally the whole world goes into a kind of flux where massive changes happen. There is a social battle between going forward to something totally new and a battle to go back to what was, with fear and reactivity raging on both sides. These are times when the political sphere is so unstable that it is shifting existence for citizens daily, giving them no sense of control over their life experience. Human society functions like much more of a web than most people really understood before. And they find this out the hard way when a crisis in one place on earth, ripples outward causing crisis in their own lives as well. And there is a massive crumbling of all the things that people thought they could rely on. Things that offered them security, stability, confidence, trust and guarantee. And one thing is absolutely pervasive the world over… Uncertainty.
People do not thrive well in a state of uncertainty. Uncertainty implies that nothing is predictable. And people are wired to need a certain level of predictability. Without this predictability, when you don’t know what is coming next, people slip into chronic stress and anxiety. Interpersonal conflicts increase and maintaining relationships becomes harder. People become frozen in a kind of decision and action paralysis. Many people become hyper controlling, trying to anticipate and prevent every possible negative scenario they can think of, which leads to burnout. And people cope with the distress they feel through a myriad of unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Because uncertainty is such a tormenting experience for us as people, I am going to reveal to you a question that you can ask yourself in times of extreme uncertainty, which has the power to turn things around for you, as well as some other tips for facing times of extreme uncertainty.
The question that you can ask yourself in times of extreme uncertainty is: What Would I Do, If A Sense of Certainty Would Never Come Back? If going forward, things were always just as uncertain as they are today?
I know that at face value, this question sounds odd. You would think that the right thing to do would be to find ways to create a sense of certainty, not lean into uncertainty. But let me tell you why this question is so powerful. This question puts us in a place where we must let go of all sense of guarantee regarding the outcomes of what we put our energy into. Why is this so powerful? Because it reveals to us what matters so much to us that we can put energy into it, no matter the outcome.
This gives us a sense of purpose, meaning and direction in the storm of uncertainty. And this is a wildly stabilizing force. Like having a north star shining for us to navigate through a storm on the open ocean. On top of this, we are no longer playing a game solely for the future. We are playing a deeper game that is far less vulnerable to challenges.
Asking this question puts us directly in touch with our deepest values. And values are an incredible thing because when we are conscious of them and are living according to them, they make us very, very resilient. Asking this question also reveals something else. What we would vote for with our thoughts, words, decisions, behaviors and actions, regardless of what the outcome is. We vote for the future in this life we are living. We vote for what we want to have be the reality and we vote for what we want to have happen. But in this time space reality, we vote with our thoughts, our words, our decisions and our actions. If you would like to dive deeper on these concepts, you can watch two of my videos. The first titled: The Secret To A Happy Life – Values. And the second titled: Cast your Vote.
Really spend some time answering this question for yourself, without the influence of anyone else. But, for the sake of your understanding, here are two examples of answers submitted by two people who were kind enough to let me use them.
When I see this question, my first thought is, I can’t rely on the future or place my happiness in some guaranteed future so my power exists much more in the present moment and extracting my desired life experiences from the here and now. I do still want to work towards something. So, I will set more realistic goals that are short term. Like for example, if I want to feel a sense of adventure, I won’t try to plan something out that is very far in advance, like a big trip to Asia. I would be looking at what I can do in the next few days or this week that would give me a sense of adventure. So, my answer to this question would be I would live mostly in each moment. I would make sure that when I am walking on the beach, I am totally there, feeling the sand under my feet, smelling the ocean air, feeling what it feels like emotionally to watch kids laugh and play in the water and build sand castles. Really noticing all the colors of the rocks and seashells. Feeling the warmth of the sun against my skin.
I would keep all my options open regarding where to live. I would keep learning Icelandic. I would make all my decisions knowing that things could change at the drop of a hat, so I would be very conscious of what I commit to. I would make sure when I am making decisions however, not to fall into short term thinking. This means, I would put some energy into my retirement plan, but also a backup plan in case that retirement plan falls through. I wouldn’t wait to go on my trip to Mexico until things are more certain with the borders. I would go on my trip next week and fly back in through an airport that is smaller, where the border agents are more relaxed. I would limit the amount of time I am listening to the news and doom scrolling to a certain time of day and a certain amount of time. I would put more energy into giving my dog quality experiences. I read this thing that said your dog may be your best friend for a period of your life, but you are their best friend for their whole life. And I am realizing that it is uncertain how long she will be on this planet. I want her to have good memories and especially good memories with me, where she knows I love her. I’m going to do things to enrich her life experience, rather than just taking her along on things that enrich my life experience.
Also, something that is immediately obvious is that what I care the most about is enjoying these moments with other people. I would seek out and create positive shared memories. I’d approach every day with the intention of crafting experiences I can look back on with joy, whether that’s a walk on the beach, a shared laugh, or a meaningful group activity. I would intentionally create those moments, week by week, through things like community meals or spontaneous games. I want to seek out new people too who share that same desire for meaningful, present-moment connection with each other. My life would become about curating and living the kinds of memories I want to remember, not someday—but now.
If a sense of certainty would never come back, I would stop putting my energy, dreams or hopes into the future. It would all be about why am I doing whatever I am doing right now and what is my motivation for doing that? It wouldn't be about the outcome anymore, but it would become about the process. The process is what should be fun, exciting, energizing, motivating and when this is the case, it doesn’t matter as much for me how things end up. When I say this, I don’t mean that I would only do easy, comfortable or enjoyable things from now on. Rather it would mean getting myself to a place where everything I do, feels right for me to be doing, no matter how it goes. What this means is that what matters most to me is that I derive a sense of meaning from everything that I'm doing.
When I think deeper about this, I can see that I want to explore the world more. Because I don’t care whether exploration turns out good or not. I just love exploring. Also, I would stop dedicating so much of my life to my career because what I really value is time with my wife. It kind of shocks me that I spend so much time doing something that would not even be part of my life review after I die. I need to re-think my life here. Because if I am looking at this, if there were no guarantees regarding my future goals, the life that would make me the happiest, would be to explore new places with my wife. So, I’m going to make it a point to do more of that in a really intentional way. I may even consider changing my job around so that our lives can revolve around doing that together. Knowing her, this would make her so excited to hear this. In fact, until I did this exercise, I was the one who was arguing with her about the importance of future security and who wasn’t willing to make our lives about adventure.
And for the sake of making these times of uncertainty even more livable, here are some additional suggestions.
Make your life as “flexible”, “adaptable” and “fluid” as possible. Knowing what matters most to you is going to act as the north star to direct and stabilize you through this flux experience. But responding to times of great uncertainty calls for you to be adaptable, psychologically flexible and to make your life as flexible as possible. This is a time to really have an open mind. It’s a time to diversify. This is a time to organize your life so you are able to make very fast decisions and make very fast changes. This is a time for multiple back up plans for every plan.
Grace the vulnerable feelings that come with this uncertainty with your unconditional, focused presence. Uncertainty causes us to feel a flurry of emotions and sensations, usually in the range of anxiety, terror, tension, doom, powerlessness, loss of control disgust, hopelessness, helplessness, depression, frustration, anger, rage, confusion and grief. We usually try desperately to distract ourselves from them and to get out of and away from them. But we need to take the opposite approach. We need to let the emotions ‘sound’ through our entire body. And allow the information contained within those emotions to surface to our conscious awareness. This will make you far less reactive to the uncertainty, and far more conscious. Because of this, you are far more likely to make the right decision and take the right actions. You can do this through meditation. I have a good meditative process I can highly recommend for this. It is called The Emotional Experiencing Process. You can learn how to do this process in my video titled: How To Do The Emotional Experiencing Process.
Make the following conscious: What I Can Control and What I Can’t Control. When things are uncertain, we tend to try to control everything so we can try to avoid pain. But we are in a situation where there is a lot that is not within our control. Ironically, because this poses the biggest threat, this is where we put the vast majority of our focus and time and energy. And as a result, we end up in terror and being very disempowered. We’ve got to see the doors that are closed in order to see the ones that are open. So, you need to take the situation that is causing you uncertainty and clearly define what you can control and what you can’t control. Literally make a list. With the stuff you can’t control, you need to set it aside. Let go of it until the day that something you can control and do about it becomes obvious to you. With the stuff that you can control, put your energy and time and actions there. Follow through on those things.
Keep Coming Back To This Thought: “Whatever is happening might supposed to be happening, can I remain open to seeing why?”. When we are being thrown into a situation where it feels like we are headed towards a future that is unwanted, we immediately feel like it shouldn’t be happening. This puts us in resistance to what is happening. Rather than leaning into what is happening, so we can really work with what is happening effectively, this just puts us in a war with what is. This question does the opposite. It helps us to lean into uncertainty with an attitude of openness and curiosity towards what we don’t yet know or see. Even if you are a scientist at heart and not spiritual at all, you can at least acknowledge that you cannot know 100% if what is happening is supposed to be happening or not. So, you must remain open to the possibility that what is happening is supposed to be happening. There were plenty of things that we do not understand the bigger purpose of because that bigger purpose is revealed only in time.
There is a great story of a Chinese farmer which reveals this truth. In this story, a farmer's horse runs away. His neighbors express sympathy, after all, this is a terrible thing that shouldn’t have happened but the farmer replies, "Maybe so, maybe not. We'll see." The next day, the horse returns, bringing several wild horses with it. The neighbors are now excited. They feel this is a wonderful thing that should have happened. After all, it is well deserved given that he deserves some good luck after the pain of losing his horse. But the farmer says, "Maybe so, maybe not. We'll see." Later, the farmer's son, while trying to tame one of the wild horses, is thrown off and breaks his leg. The neighbors are concerned, they see it as something that shouldn’t have happened. Something unfair. After all, he is too old to work his fields alone. But the farmer again responds, "Maybe so, maybe not. We'll see." Finally, soldiers arrive to conscript young men into the army, but they spare the son due to his injury. The neighbors are relieved, they suddenly see the son breaking his leg as divine intervention. Again, the farmer simply states, "Maybe so, maybe not. We'll see." The story is written to emphasize that it's impossible to know the true nature of an event at the moment it happens. Nor is it possible to know whether it will lead somewhere good or bad or both. What seems like bad luck might eventually lead to a positive outcome, and what seems like good luck could have unforeseen negative consequences. The takeaway is that becoming overly attached to wanted or unwanted outcomes, is not an effective approach to life. That embracing the uncertainty is a better approach.
Let go of your need for things to be a certain way. When we know what we want and we know what we don’t want, we tend to become very attached to the way we think things have to be and have to happen. But this world is littered with stories where the thing that someone wanted and needed most, came to them in the most unexpected way. Including through the very experience they thought would take them further away from what they want.
Become curious about where this life is going to take you. If our life journey were a trip down a river, you will notice that like most of us, you probably spend your life trying to control the current of the river. You do not consciously know where the river will take you. You only know where you would prefer for it to take you. But in order to embrace uncertainty, let go of the idea that you can control the river itself and be curious about where the river of your life is leading you.
Realize that we do not fear the unknown. And discover what it is that you actually fear. The saying, “I fear the unknown.” is a popular scapegoat in times of uncertainty. No one actually fears the unknown because one would not know what to fear. We only begin to fear what we do not know when we think that we DO in fact know what bad thing the unknown could contain. For example, I may say that I fear the unknown when I’m talking about changing my job. But the truth is in fact that I’m afraid that there is a potential that I might like my new job even less than my current one. If this is the case, what I am really afraid of is being stuck with a job I don’t like. So, ask yourself: What painful or scary thing is it that you are afraid the unknown contains? Face those fears directly. Control what you can control regarding those fears and put some energy into finding ways to decrease your fear of those things that you fear.
Seek out healthy stress reducers. Uncertainty sends us into fight of flight mode that never ends. The body cannot sustain this. It wasn’t designed for chronic distress. You need to allow your nervous system the things that help it to come back into a state of ease. This includes eating a diet that calms the nervous system instead of stimulates it. It may be tempting to eat junk foods because you find them comforting. But those foods are only adding pressure to a body that is already under pressure. Remember that the things that reduce your stress may be different from what reduces someone else’s stress, so look to design your perfect cocktail of stress reduction assisters. Here is a list of some ideas to start with. Go for a walk barefoot somewhere in nature, exercise, write, take a hot bath with Epsom salts, watch cute or funny video clips, get a massage, do progressive relaxation techniques, take a yoga class, listen to a guided meditation, swim in the ocean, dance, create a bed time routine that helps you to wind down, make gratitude lists or list of positives, listen to stress reducing music, cook, spend time with animals, drink tea, attend a social activity, pick up a new hobby, break down big tasks into small manageable steps, make lists, watch a movie etc.
Consciously spend time each day in the present moment. Pretty much everyone will tell you to focus on the present when you are afraid of the future. This is not easy to do and even seems stupid when it seems like a threat is on the horizon, charging right for you. The way around this, is to realize that you are not being asked to just stay in the present moment all the time. You can dedicate time and energy to the things you can control that decrease your fears regarding the future. At the same time, uncertainty has a way of robbing you of your life. It causes you to start living your life in the future, most especially in the possible worst-case scenarios in the future. This, causes life in the here and now to pass you by. It also tells your brain and body that something bad IS happening. By consciously spending time during your day only in the present moment, your brain realizes that nothing bad is happening in the here and now. And it starts to take in the full experience of whatever is happening in the here and now. The key here is that wherever you are, no matter what you are doing (for example, sitting on a couch at home or doing a hobby of yours or spending time with friends or family or while you are driving), give all of your attention to it, being fully present, experiencing what is occurring through every one of your senses. When your mind wanders, just bring it back to what is happening right here and right now. If you want to learn a great exercise which will help you to do this, you can watch my video titled: Teal’s Favorite Exercise for Getting Into The Present Moment.
Seek Support and Connect. Times of serious uncertainty put pressure on social connections and cause many people to isolate. But the reality is that what is needed is the opposite. Stress is greatly amplified if we are isolated with no help. Uncertainty is so, so much more tolerable if we have someone to go through the uncertainty with us and help us with the things we need help with. This means go to and seek out those people who you can trust and who you can share your thoughts and feelings with. Expand your social network. Connect both with people who are going through the same struggles as you are, as well as with people who seem to have mastered what you are currently struggling with. Brainstorm with people. Move closer to the people and places that offer you the most support. Seek out advice. Find professionals who can help you with whatever you are facing. Get help with practical things. Ask for help and accept it, no matter whether that help is with small things or big things. Think of it like this, on the river of life, which is taking you somewhere uncertain, how much different would your experience be if your raft was hitched to someone else’s raft and you were floating down that river together? Social connection and support can provide something solid when nothing else is solid.
Life is like a journey into uncharted waters for us all. You are not alone in this respect. So don’t ever let your pain convince you that you are alone in the uncertainty of your life. Let’s all see what this ride down the river has in store for each one of us, and for us all.
Many people in the world are struggling to feel safe right now given that we are living in a global climate where danger is ever-present and looming and we are constantly being bombarded by this warning and that warning about all the plethora of dangers that exist. But even in times that do not pose as much danger to the people of the world as this one, many people struggle to feel safe. Feeling unsafe all the time is corrosive. It is not a state of being that a person can maintain long term. Feeling chronically unsafe implies that your body is being constantly flooded with stress chemicals and that you are living in chronic psychological distress. This takes a toll on your wellbeing big time. For this reason, I’m going to give you some tricks for how to feel safer.
It is really important if you feel unsafe to know that your being needs to be able to tell you when you are actually in an unsafe situation so you can take actions accordingly. The goal of feeling safer should not be to ignore important cues your being is sending to you. The goal isn’t to make it feel better to stay in an unsafe situation. For example, imagine a woman who is in an abusive relationship using techniques to feel safer in that situation, rather than taking the action on that feeling of unsafety to get out of the situation. Your first go-to when you feel unsafe should be to get out of any immediate danger that may exists and get into a safer situation. The problem in today’s world is that in the modern world, we are dealing with unsafety’s that are not immediate. They are more complex and chronic. They look less like being unsafe because a sabretooth tiger is chasing us in the moment and more like the ongoing unsafety of censorship that is going on in the world and what this means for our sense of safety within society. On top of this, many people who have experienced trauma, have a very hard time feeling safe, despite being in immediate situations where they are objectively safe. When this is the case, it is important to help yourself to feel safer and doing so, will in fact help you to better navigate the types of unsafety’s that may exist in your life.
Some of us are so accustomed to feeling unsafe that we don’t even consciously recognize that feeling unsafe is what is happening. In order to feel safer, you have to first notice and name that what is happening is that you are feeling unsafe. That what has been triggered is your danger response. From there, you need to identify what you are seeing as dangerous. And from there, you have three basic approaches. I think it is best to do all three, rather than to choose between them. These three approaches to feeling unsafe are: To take action to make the situation safer, to change your perception of the situation to a perception that makes you feel safer. And to change the way your body is reacting i.e. calm down your nervous system. Let’s look at some of the best tools for doing this.
Turn your attention inside and witness the unsafety itself. Unsafety shows up inside of you as sensations, feelings, internal dialogue thoughts, images, and for some people even sounds and smells too. Close your eyes and feel and witness these, like a meditation. This is going to be hard at first because the sensations associated with unsafety do not feel good and they either paralyze you as if you are frozen or make you want to do something, like run or hide or fight. Allow the feelings and sensations to echo through your whole body. Hear the internal dialogue thoughts and watch the images as they arise and dissipate. You can mentally name the things you are feeling and hearing and seeing as they occur, just to keep yourself in this witness perspective. Doing this, keeps you from dissociating from yourself in response to fear. If you dissociate from yourself when you feel fear, you abandon yourself when you feel afraid. Obviously being abandoned when you are afraid, makes your fear much worse. Instead, it brings unconditional presence to yourself, which decreases the fear. It also gives you valuable information about your fear, that helps you to know yourself better and make informed decisions for yourself. It also activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which counteracts the fear response and promotes a sense of calm. This exercise signals your brain and body that if you are focused inside yourself like this rather than focused externally, you are not currently in immediate danger. If you would like to dive deeper on this exercise, you can watch my video titled: The Emotional Experiencing Process. Just remember that when it comes to experiencing unsafety, it really helps to name what you are seeing and hearing and feeling because doing so prevents you from being taken out of the exercise and down a “worry wormhole” where an aspect of the exercise takes you off purely into the mental field where you are engaged only with a negative visualization chain of possible bad things that have happened or could happen and where you are no longer even noticing how you feel in your body in the here and now.”
Become consciously proactive about whatever it is that is making you feel unsafe. To do this, first write down something you are afraid of. From there, identify what you can control about this and what you cannot control about it. Accept that you cannot control those things you cannot control. With the things you can control, create an actual plan for empowered actions to take and do those. If you don’t know what you can do about it, put energy into doing research about it. Often, our sense of unsafety is extreme because we passively worry about things, and by doing so, slip into the feeling of powerlessness without taking any kind of proactive approach to the unsafety we feel. For example, Roger felt really unsafe about the danger of potentially losing his 401K retirement money. When he did this exercise, he realized that he does not have control over the US Economy collapsing or not. He does not have any control over whether the industry he is in stands the test of time. He does not have control over what the CEO of his company decides to do with the company. On the other hand, he does have control over taking money out of his 401K account. He does have control over whether he stays working in his industry or finds a backup industry. He does have control over finding different methods of building a retirement for himself. He does have control over moving to another country where his industry is booming. He does have control over investing money in different things, rather than putting all of his money into one basket. He does have control over shifting his perspective about retirement in general. With this, he goes to work researching and making plans and back up plans and taking actions that cause him to feel safer about the future of his finances.
Identify your fearful thought and write down any thought that soothes that thought. For this exercise, it is best to get to the root or core thought. The way you do this, is by asking “Why Would That Be So bad?” or/and What Would That Mean for Me? And then answering as vulnerably as possible. For example, let’s say that you had a thought like I’m going to be fired. You would then ask: Why would that be so bad and/or what would that mean for me? Your answer may be: Because then I wouldn’t have any money. To that thought, you would then ask yourself: Why would that be so bad and/or what would that mean for me? Your answer may be: Because I would lose my home. To that you would ask yourself: Why would that be so bad and/or what would that mean for me? Your answer may be: I would have to move back in with my parents. To that you would ask: Why would that be so bad and/or what would that mean for me? Your answer may be: I would be seen as a failure. To that you would ask: Why would that be so bad and/or what would that mean for me? Your answer may be: I would rejected. To that you would ask: Why would that be so bad and/or what would that mean for me? Your answer may be: I’d feel alone and bad about myself. You could technically keep going with this train of questioning to each thought even longer. But we have defined the root of what it is that is truly feared: Feeling alone and feeling bad about oneself. This thought will come with a lot of vulnerable emotional intensity. Along the way to getting to this root thought, we also discovered that there is a fear of being seen as a failure, being rejected, moving back in with the parents. What this person needs to do, is to come up with thoughts and perspectives and evidence that soothes or better yet, disproves these thoughts… That I might lose my job. That I would have to move back in with by parents. That I would be a failure. That I will be rejected. And most especially, the core fearful thought. In this case, it would be: I would feel alone and bad about myself. Some thoughts that might soothe the fear would be: I have an aunt that would let me move in with her and I have a cousin who would be thrilled to move in somewhere together and plenty of people don’t even have parents to move in with and they find a way to make it. So, I don’t have to move in with my parents. I have friends who don’t care at all how much money I make or if I have a job. So, technically I won’t be alone or feel alone if I lose my job. I don’t want my self-esteem to ride on how my parents see me, which obviously based on this exercise, I can see it still does. Nor do I want it to ride on whether I have a job. This has motivated me to place my self-esteem in different things that are way more in my own control. That sounds kind of empowering actually. Other people really don’t care if I fail or succeed. They are too overwhelmed trying to deal with their own lives to spend their time focusing on me failing or not. I feel bad about myself, even with this job I have. So, really losing my job wouldn’t suddenly cause me to lose something. And there are better ways to work on that than trying to prove my worth through a stupid job. I am acting like the only job I could get, is this one job. If I lost my job, I could get another job. This world is very large and lots of people need my skillset. I can see my poor self-esteem even in this scarcity attitude I have towards it not even crossing my mind that I have enough value to be in demand by other companies. I have enough money to look for a job without getting income and still afford everything for three months. That is enough time to find something new. I don’t know that I am getting fired. I am assuming this based off of rumors about layoffs in the company. I can even see my poor self-esteem in this assumption. This really isn’t that I am unsafe. This is a self-esteem issue.
You get the point. This exercise would continue until you feel significant relief regarding your sense of safety. When we experience chronic unsafety, our mind is usually doing the opposite of this. Our mind automatically comes up with all the thoughts that could possibly make us more scared and more convinced of our unsafety. With this exercise, we are consciously practicing doing the opposite. It is hard at first because you are so, so not used to it. And because you might have a part of you that is convinced that looking for proof that you are safe, may just make you more unsafe. As if it is choosing denial and putting you at risk of being blindsided. But we are not doing this exercise to turn a blind eye to dangers. In fact, this exercise helps to clearly identify them, so that you can clarify the situation and respond in a more conscious way than you would if your danger centers were triggered into emergency mode.
Create a list of things that help you specifically to feel safe. Everyone’s list will be different. After all, one person may feel safer around a specific animal or in a specific environment and one person will feel unsafe around that animal or in that environment. One person may have a negative association with something that another person finds deeply soothing and has a positive association with. To give you an example of this list, here is a list done by a friend of mine:
Listening to 128 Hz, 528 Hz or 396 Hz music on YouTube
Writing in my positive focus journal
Listening to guided meditations
Watching cooking shows
Swimming in a pool with goggles on
Looking at my collection of feel-good images that I put together
Listening to my collection of feel-good sounds I put together
Hiking to a lookout spot with a big view
Taking a hot bath with Epsom salts and a bath bomb that is either pink or purple
Walking on the beach and digging my feet into the sand
Petting cats
Buying gifts for people and wrapping them up beautifully
Watching legally blonde
The flavor of a quesadilla made with mayonnaise, melted cheddar and fresh tomato and also mashed potatoes.
Going to my favorite tea shop for a sweet tea latte
The smell of lilac
The smell of foam mattresses
My weighted blanket
Weddings
Talking to one of my two best friends, Leila
Reading in haybales
Watching puppies and other cute animals on Instagram
Sticking my fingers in uncooked rice
Aquariums
Grandfather clock noises
Watching people be kind to each other
Making treasure hunts for children
Popping tar bubbles in old roads
Christmas and anything to do with Christmas
Walking in aspen forests
Listening to Jim Gaffigan, my favorite comedian
You get the idea. Once you’ve created your list, get into the habit of going to that list to pick out either one or a few things on that list to do.
Recognize the safety in the here and now by coming into the here and now. When we feel unsafe, we are actually living in the past or the future. We are mentally living in the negative experience of what did happen before or what could or will happen later. Your mind does this so you can try to resolve what happened or pre-respond to what might happen, because it thinks that by doing so, you can prevent it from actually happening. Your mind is telling you that the bad thing is happening now. To counteract this, get into the practice of deliberately placing all of your attention on where you are right here and now with all of your senses. And as you do this, ask yourself, am I unsafe right now? If your mind says yes, invite it to tell you why. It will then give reasons like: There is a war happening or I might die of a sickness or my job is unstable or the people I love might die or I’m in the middle of a lawsuit or anything else. Then, ask yourself with each worry item, but what is happening right now? It can help to name what is happening. Such as: Right now, I am sitting in a room. The couch is bouncy. I can hear road noise outside. The cat is in the corner asleep. The sunshine is coming in the window. I smell the breakfast I made still in the air. There are white curtains. And keep doing this, noticing that your body is now starting to register that you are actually safe right now. For a person who feels chronic anxiety (which is about the future) or who has experienced trauma (which is about the past), it is hard to actually be in the present moment. It’s like another dimension that you don’t spend much time in. You have to deliberately train yourself as a practice. But it can do wonders for your nervous system.
Create a collection of safety sounds, safety images and safety smells. Use them as safety triggers. It would shock you to know just how much influence sounds have on your feeling of safety. The sounds that cause one person to feel safe are going to be different than another. These could be anything from ocean sounds to bird sounds to city sounds to ASMR sounds to certain songs. As a little tip, human beings are particularly affected by birdsong. We have been programmed for millions of years that when birds are chirping, we are not in danger because they go silent when a predator is near or when there is a storm or when other bad things are happening. And it is particularly effective to listen to the birdsong from the place where your mother gestated you, the place where you grew up, familiar places you associate with positive experiences and don’t forget, the lands of your ancestors. For example, if I knew that my ancestors were from Dorset England, I would find birdsong from Dorset England. Seek out and create a collection of the sounds that make you feel safe and then play them when you want to feel safer.
Do the same with safety images. These could be anything from images of people you love or who make you feel safer in the world to photos that remind you of good memories to artistic photographs that cause you to feel safe to images of cute animals to images of cartoon or comic book scenes to newspaper cut outs to images of angels to quotes that cause you to feel safer to places that make you feel safe to colors that make you feel safe etc. Look through this collection of images when you want to feel safer.
Do the same with safety smells. Seek out and collect smells that you know make you feel safe. These could be smells from your childhood that evoke a sense of safety, specific candles, the smell of your partner’s clothes, the smell of a pet, specific incense, certain spices, baking cookies or bread specifically for the smell, doing laundry specifically for the smell, going to the ocean specifically for the smell etc. As a special hint, these tools are particularly effective when you do them at the same time. Look through your safety images at the same time as you listen to your safety sounds. And at the same time as you smell one or more safety smells. What you are doing with this exercise is creating safety triggers. This is the positive version of a traditional trigger, which is negative. And you know how powerful those are. These can be especially powerful too.
Use 2 different breathing pattern exercises. You can pick whichever feels best to you at a given time. The first is the 4-6-8 breath. For this breathing pattern, you breathe in for the count of four seconds, hold your breath at the top of that inhale for six seconds, and breathe out for the count of eight seconds. And the second breathing pattern is the box breath. For this breathing pattern, you breathe in for the count of four seconds, hold at the top of the inhale for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds and hold again at the end of the exhale for four seconds. With these breathing patterns, do them for whatever duration feels comfortable and effective for you. Some people like 3 minutes. Some people like 5 minutes. Some people like ten to 15 minutes. Others will use them much longer. These breathing patterns are incredibly effective for quickly decreasing stress levels, giving your mind something to focus on instead of fixating on danger and promoting a sense of physiological safety. You can think of them like built in medicine for feeling unsafe.
Create an internal safe space and go there when you need to feel safer. This is a safe place that you have total control over and that you can mentally go to at any time. Many of us have never had the ability to create a safe place for ourselves. That has been an area of powerlessness in our life. So, the ability to actually create a safe place and utilize it, is a deeply healing thing in and of itself. By creating this safe space in our minds, we’re able to bend the physical rules that govern and restrict us in our physical life. For example, a cut on our arm might usually take two weeks to heal in physical life, but in our safe space, we can put a special salve on it, and it can heal before our eyes. This kind of “magical thinking” is actually a critical ingredient when we are healing from states of powerlessness. When you are creating an internal safe space, keep in mind that this will be an intensely individual place; therefore, there’s no right or wrong way to create it. Allow your mind to reveal to you what would feel best. Just think for a moment about a place that gave you the closest feeling to safety in this life. For example, it could have been a mossy forest. Or Santa’s workshop in the North Pole. Or a coral reef. Or the inside of a protective animal. Or the bread cave inside of the bubbles in a pizza crust. Or it may be up in the billowing clouds. Or your grandmother’s house. Or the inside of a fairy house. Or a place from a comic book or video game. Or outer space. Or a school. Or the inside of a purple geode. Or snow-covered mountains. Or the inside of a snow-globe. There is literally no limit. Just try to identify a place that feels or sounds the safest to you and imagine this place existing inside of you. When you want to feel safer, go there and be in it, walk around it, lay in it, bathe in it, play with and engage with the things in it. Each time you go there, you will be adding details. For example, say your safe place is a beach. One day you may go there and realize that having beach beds with canopies would feel even safer and so, you add them. The next, you decide that you want to have your pet dog or a pet unicorn there and to sit on the beach petting it. The next day, you may decide that adding a tunnel from the beach space to an aspen forest feels even safer.
If anything unsafe appears in your safe space, this simply means that your mind does not feel you have any control over being safe because someone or something was against your safety before in your life. What is healing for you if this occurs, is to become really creative and trouble shoot the unsafety. For example, you can have protectors, such as angels or Vikings or super heroes or mythical animals come in and deal with the unsafety. Or you can go look at what the unsafety is specifically and deal with it directly. Or you can have it rain some substance that burns and dissolves anything it touches that isn’t supposed to be there. Or you can demolish the old safe space and create a new one. This place will feel more and more real to you and therefore will become more effective as time goes on. The point is to go there, like you would with a meditative visualization and really be in it with all of your senses. Resourcing the effect that being there is having on the way you feel and letting that spread through your whole body.
Root into the deeper security of the formless self. There is absolutely nothing wrong with setting up your life experience so that externally you have the experience of security. To the degree that it does not in and of itself diminish your wellbeing or life experience. And to the degree that it is possible. It is healthy to do so and more than that, this is part of personal expansion. A big part of universal expansion is inherent in creating safety in this physical dimension, especially for each other. At the same time, there is a point to which safety is not actually possible in the world of form because it is so fluctuating and temporary. Yet, the world of form is where most of us look for solidness in order to guarantee ourselves safety. The world of form is currently the leading edge of expansion. This means it is ever changing. The structures you depend on, your job, laws, the people, places and things in it, your relationships, your health or life insurance, your body etc. can always change. They are always changing. You cannot be sure they will always be the same or that going forward they will be there at all. This makes basing your safety entirely on their solidness, such as them staying the same or always existing, a bit like building a sand castle where the waves break. Accepting this, I mean really accepting this, will actually re-direct you to anchor your sense of safety into something deeper than the world of form. You will be consciously existing in two dimensions. Not losing awareness of nor the truth of one dimension as you focus entirely into one or the other. That is a main element of the mastery of a conscious life.
In a time-space reality of contrast, which means you experience both the wanted and the unwanted, you are going to experience both wanted and unwanted things. Both danger and safety. Both pleasure and pain. It is the challenge of unwanted things that brings about your personal expansion and an increase in your consciousness. This temporal world, including this one life you are living right now, is playing out within the context of the bigger picture of the evolution of consciousness itself. What it is, is the energetic essence coming into the dimension of form. The timeless coming into the dimension of time. The constant coming into the dimension of change. And this dimension of existence, most especially this dimension of you, can offer real security. Because in this, you will anchor into what is timeless, what cannot be damaged and what is beyond death. Continuing to come back to an awareness of that which is beyond this life, including that aspect of you that is beyond this life, will put you in the bigger picture and this will make things that make you feel unsafe, seem smaller and also temporary. So, the very temporariness that causes you to feel unsafe, can potentially in this way, also be the very thing that makes you feel safer. Remember that while building safety for yourself and others is perfectly fine, ultimately being safe was not your purpose for coming into this life. If you obsess over trying to make your life secure and safe, all that will happen is that you will arrive at death…safely. Any practice that helps you to remember or become conscious of this formless dimension, of that which is beyond this temporary form you are currently experiencing the world of form through, will help you to feel safer.
As an additional note to this list, never underestimate the power of co-regulation when it comes to unsafety. You are a human. Humans are a socially dependent species. Humans need each other to be safe and to feel safe. This means, seek other people out and be in connection. Let other people help you out of whatever unsafety you are facing. The feeling of safety is a fundamental need. It is a cornerstone of the quality of life that you are experiencing. So, put some conscious energy into these practices and watch your quality of life improve.
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